5.8 Process Management

Process Management allows you to view the incident’s progress in the workflow or terminate a workflow process. Process Management allows you to:

Process Execution is the time period during which the process is operational, with process instances being created and managed.

When an iTRAC process is executed or instantiated in the iTRAC server, a process instance is created, managed and eventually terminated by the iTRAC server in accordance with the process definition. As the process progresses towards completion or termination it executes various activities defined in the workflow template based on the criteria for the transitions between them. The iTRAC workflow server processes Manual and Automatic Steps differently.

An iTRAC process must be created with a single associated incident; there is therefore a one-to-one match between iTRAC processes and incidents. Not all incidents are necessarily attached to processes, however.

NOTE:Only one incident can be associated to an iTRAC process instance.

5.8.1 Instantiating a Process

An iTRAC process can be instantiated in the iTRAC server by associating an incident to an iTRAC process by the following three methods

  • Associate an iTRAC process to the incident at the time of incident creation

  • Associate an iTRAC process to incident after an incident has been created

  • Associate an iTRAC process to an incident through correlation

For more information on associating a process to an incident, see Section 4.0, Incidents Tab.

5.8.2 Automatic Step Execution

When the process instance executes an automatic Activity Step, Command Step, or Mail Step, it executes the associated Activity or command defined in the Template, and stores the result in process variables. It then transitions to the next Step in the iTRAC template.

For example, an Activity might be defined to ping a server; when this Activity is executed in a workflow process the Activity runs and attach the results to the associated incident.

5.8.3 Manual Step Execution

On encountering a Manual Step, the iTRAC server sends out notifications in the form of work items to the assigned resource. If the Step was assigned to a role then a work item is sent to all users within the role. The iTRAC server then waits for the user to complete the work item before proceeding to the next activity.

For more information, see Section 6.1.1, Work Item Summary.

NOTE:All Manual Steps must be assigned to a Role, or group of users.

5.8.4 Display Status

The Display Status function is to monitor the progress of a process. As the process instance progresses from one activity the user might track the progress visually by clicking on the Refresh button, the process monitor also provides an audit trail of all the actions performed by the iTRAC server when executing the process.

Activities that are running are represented by and those completed by and terminated by icons respectively.

5.8.5 Displaying Status of a Process

To display Status:

  1. Click iTRAC tab.

  2. Click Display Process Manager icon.

  3. Click down-arrow on the Switch Views button to select a view or create a new view.

  4. In the Process Manager window, highlight and right-click a process and select Actions > Display Status.

  5. The current step is highlighted in red.

  6. To close, click X in the upper right corner.

5.8.6 Changing Views in Process Manager

To Change the View in the Process View Manager:

  1. Click iTRAC tab.

  2. Click Display Process Manager icon.

  3. Click the drop down list in Manage View and select Edit Current View option.

  4. In View Option window you can also set your:

    • Fields

    • Group by

    • Sort

    • Filter

    • Tree Display

    Click Apply and Save

The following is view with Tree Display set to Status (running and not started).

5.8.7 Starting or Terminating a Process

To Start or Terminate a Process:

  1. Click iTRAC tab.

  2. Click Display Process Manager icon.

    Alternatively, you can select iTRAC > Display Process Manager.

  3. Click drop down arrow on the Switch Views button to select a view or create a new view.

  4. In the Process View Manager window, highlight a process, right-click and select Actions > Start Process or Terminate Process.