Branching Structures in Business Processes

See Also

Flow charts are helpful when describing business processes. In flow charts you can express conditional ("branching") workflow and iterative ("looping") workflow visually.

You can refer to flow charts and diagrams as USoft TeamWork Sources. You can then cross-reference them from USoft Business Process Steps by using the Source attribute.

In USoft, "branching" and "looping" is expressed in textual form, often in Business Rules. You can append these Rules to Business Process Steps illustrated in flow charts by using the Belongs To field.

For example, a Process Step could be Sign Contract. A Business Rule belonging to this process step could specify that "a contract is signed only if the customer has a managed account or if the customer has paid". Sequence numbers of process steps let you specify the general process flow (Pay comes before Sign), and Business Rules can be appended that allow you to be more precise (Pay OR Manage Account is a sufficient condition for Sign).