This post is part of the Process Mining Blog Series to assist customers to quickly enable their teams and organizations to provide consistent governance in each analysis and detect improvement opportunities with ease. This is especially important as organizations scales teams using Process Mining across an enterprise.
For example, Process Configuration set up for a Customer case workflow may have specific improvement detectors, activities or even breakdowns that we want to include or suggest to anyone within a team who doing an analysis.
The outcomes for using a process configurations are simple: Make it easier, no guess work and provide a level of governance and consistency.
We will also include how Process Mining Content Packs can accelerate how Process Configurations are created and managed.
How to Create a Process Configuration
This example will be using the Zurich release.
This approach can be applied to any workflow (Incident, HR Case, Customer Service Case, etc.) including out workflows (tables) that are custom to any given workflow.
In this example, we will create a new process configuration for the Customer Case workflow.
Open the Process Mining Workspace
Select the Process Configuration(wrench) icon.
In your instance this list may be blank if Process Configurations have not been created before. You see a few examples listed.
There are 2 tabs in Process Configurations, Configurations and Content Pack Templates
Content Packs can be installed/loaded into your instance from the ServiceNow Store or from the ServiceNow Instance Application manager. These content packs have configurations and improvement opportunity detectors that can be imported to assist teams in quickly creating configurations
In this instance, the ITSM content pack has been installed.
Since we are looking to add a configuration for Customer Case, I will also install the Process Mining Content Pack for CSM. This is not required, but recommended as it will offer options to import and leverage within the workflow analysis.
Once installed, we can go ahead and build a process configuration for Customer Case workflows.
Next, let’s build a brand new Process Configuration for Customer Case.
Next, select the table/workflow we want to create a configuration for, in this case, Customer Case:
Since we installed a content pack, the option to automatically import and start with the template will be exposed, we will select that check box.
Next, the following Process Configuration page will start on the Process Details :
Notice, even though the content pack was loaded, there are still some configurations that are not included. We offer this flexibility for customers to choose their own governance model.
We will step through each of areas highlighted in green.
Process Details: These are important to define how work process states and who is doing the work within the process. This information will be used throughout the configuration.
Once these definitions are completed, new options will appear:
- Map Responsibilities - This mapping enables domain-specific insights, such as idle time analysis.
- Automatically add State and Assignment group to every Process Mine project for this use case – allows for ease of use to always include important activities to be included in every analysis.
Map state responsibilities - Define the responsibilities for each state. Examples are provided
Next, we will select the Recommendations Setup, on the far left.
The intent of Recommendations is to surface recommended options while a Process Mining project is being created.
Activity fields, which state and assignment were defined in the Process Details are included here. One can change or add other fields to be included in what is to be recommended as an activity (category, for example) when a project for this workflow is being created.
Breakdown fields:
This represents how one can slice and dice analysis based on the different fields and attributes a workflow has.
One can easily pick the appropriate fields within the table
Child Table:
One can select child tables that are related to this workflow to be included an analysis. In this case the Customer Case task table is included:
Next, we will select the Investigative features, on the far left.
Investigative features enable tools that can be utilized to provide the evidence that lives in the unstructured data such as short description as well as analytics to surface root cause analysis.
The Content pack has already filled in some of the investigate features, but depending on the content pack, one may need to fill in more or less of these configurations.
- Automated root cause analysis - define the fields that impact the quality, effectiveness and velocity of a workflow. Easily choose fields or remove fields deemed not necessary.
- Cluster Analysis– Defined cluster definition to enable the analysis of unstructured data such as “short description” within a workflow. The CSM content pack already has one imported, but one can easily be created right from the “new cluster definition”
3. Work notes Analysis – Enables the ability to summarize the rich data within work notes within a workflow. One can choose which work notes should be included as well as the ability to exclude specific users.
Next, we will select the Impact Metrics on the far left.
As of the Zurich release, Idle Time and Touch Point analysis are now included as options
Idle Time – this configuration will leverage the configuration done earlier in Process Details. One can filter out teams or users.
Touch Point Analysis – this configuration will leverage fields that are considered touch points. Recommendations will be surfaced based on process details and work note settings
KPI Categories
KPI categories are predefined buckets that organize Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) into groups based on common process objectives and leveraged within improvement opportunity detectors later in the configuration. One can choose either OOTB KPI’s or KPI’s created by an organization. This allows an improvement opportunities detected to be directly tied to critical KPI's
Next, we will select the Improvement Opportunities on the far left.
This is another example where the content pack was helpful, a number of both Automated and Rule based improvement definitions are preloaded to use.
One can always add more improvement opportunities, edit existing detectors as well.
Pro Tip: Always check the “Get Recommendations” button – this will use the Process Details to add suggested Automated Improvement detectors if they don’t already exist.
Creating new definitions will bring one to a guided setup window where both rule based and automated detectors can be created.
Once all of the Improvement Definitions are completed, the process configuration is completed!
Now that a process configuration has been created, any new Process Mining project will leverage that configuration detail within the project creation.
If you would like a deeper dive on Process Configurations, please see this recorded Process Mining Academy session on this topic(based on the Yokohama release)
