Professional BizTalk® Server 2006

12.2. The Business Process Management Scenario

The Business Process Management (BPM) scenario covers a cable TV ordering system for a customer called Southridge Video. At a high level, the solution enables call center users to activate, modify, or cancel a cable subscription and to update in-flight cable activation requests.

The business requirements imposed by Southridge Video follow. Because the scenario is based on a real-world scenario, most of them will apply to scenarios that you might develop.

• Long-running processes — A given cable order request may be completed very quickly or may last for up to a year. This poses a number of challenges for the overall solution, most notably the ability to change the business process during this time.

• Process changes — The business process, and therefore the implementation, will evolve over time and should require minimal changes to the overall solution and have little or no impact on any running processes.

• Modify in-flight processes — While an order is in flight through the solution, there is a requirement that any specific order can be modified or canceled as required. An in-flight order will be represented as an orchestration instance that needs to be interrupted.

• End-to-end tracking — The progress of an order throughout the solution should be fully visible to Southridge Video.

• No suspended messages — Suspended messages present administrative overhead and also a stalled cable order. Therefore, suspended messages should be eradicated and ...