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Gravity is a prototype developed by SAP Research in Brisbane, Australia and SAP NetWeaver Development providing real-time, cloud-based collaborative business process modelling within Google Wave. Google Wave is Google’s new real-time collaboration platform that combines features of e-mail, social networking, wikis and instant messaging in one integrated browser-based client. Google Wave offers rich developer APIs to extend the core functionality with custom components. We have embedded Gravity as a Google Wave “gadget” that can be added within the Google Wave client. Leveraging the collaborative features of Google Wave, all business process modelling activities get propagated in near real-time to all other participants of the Wave. In addition, participants of the Wave can use all other features provided by Google and its developer community to enrich the collaborative modelling experience.
In the demo we see how Gravity can be used to facilitate the development of high level process descriptions for two merging companies, BCD South Bank and FH Insurance. These two companies are merging in a tough economic climate and management need to quickly re-engineer their business processes in order to capitalise from cross-selling opportunities between banking and insurance products. In addition to the near real-time propagation of model content to all participants of a Wave, various features of true real-time collaboration are shown, such as different colour-coding for each individual modeller, history of a model, asynchronous and synchronous editing, and more. The demo also shows how robots (automated components that act as Wave participants) can be leveraged in order to syntactically correct the model on the fly. In the end, we will see how models are exported using BPMN 2.0 XML. They will then be imported into SAP Netweaver BPM for further refinement and execution.
The demo shows how new technology can be systematically leveraged in order to facilitate what Business Process Management is really about: business user collaboration within and across departments of one or more organisations.
Please check out the high resolution screencam by clicking on the Gravity screenshot above. If you experience problems with the Podcast, please click here for more versions including a low resolution of the screencam or view the embedded screencam below.
Will you come up with othe gadgets for specific industries (e.g. healthcare)?
Thanks and best regards,
Bernhard
this is a really great integration of process modelling into the SAP system. Do you know if it is possible to use this Google export to set up an SAP Business Workflow? That would be a really great feature.
Thanks and take care,
Thomas
thanks! Exporting Gravity models into business workflow certainly is conceivable, even though some conceptual mismatches would have to be solved. That is, business workflow does not rely on BPMN but rather uses an EPC-like execution model which is not fully compatible to BPMN. The near-term focus is on getting the full roundtrip into NetWeaver BPM (aka “Galaxy”).
Cheers,
Sören
Thanks! As described above this is a research prototype not an SAP product. So at this stage we’re interested in feedback and understanding where such a capability makes most sense. Perhaps it’s more suitable in certain industries, perhaps in certain generic use cases such as mergers.
Do you have a potential gadget / scenario / use case for healthcare in mind?
Regards,
Alex
I’m impressed nice to see some more functional gadgets for Wave.
/daniel
I trust we’ll be seeing this at a TechEd Demo Jam? 🙂
Cheers,
Darren
Such an approach could be the answer to offerings like Software AG’s ‘AlignSpace’ and ‘Lombardis Blueprint’. By leveraging Google Wave you can use all the collaboration features and APIs of that open plattform and concentrate on the collaborative process modelling experience.
Does your prototype already offer roundtripping so you can not only export but also import BPMN 2.0 models?
Greetings,
Alex
thanks, and no, the prototype does not feature import of BPMN models yet.
Cheers,
Alex
Thanks! We are currently working on getting the full roundtrip into the Galaxy Process Composer functional as soon as possible. Another push at DPC from your side wouldn’t hurt, though.
Cheers,
Sören
I’m the Senior Analyst covering Business Process Management with Forrester Research. I recently did a blog post on this very topic: “Social Technologies Will Drive The Next Wave Of BPM Suites” http://blogs.forrester.com/business_process/2009/09/social-technologies-will-drive-the-next-wave-of-bpm-suites.html.
In our recent Forrester Tech Radar, we coined this combination of social, knowledge management, and process modeling as “process wikis” (http://www.forrester.com/Research/Document/0,7211,53286,00.html).
Excellent job to you guys for pulling together the first (that I’ve seen) prototype of Google Wave and BPM functionality. My blog post also paints a picture of other ways Google Wave will likely be integrated with BPM suites.
Cheers,
Clay Richardson
Senior Analyst, Forrester Research
thanks, and thanks for pointing to your material, really interesting thoughts on how BPMS may evolve…
Cheers,
Alex
Just blogged about Gravity – sort of collection of knee-jerk ideas: The specified item was not found.
D.
that’s great, thanks for your excellent thoughts!
Cheers,
Kathrin
Great job on this. As a fellow “early Waver”, I’m sure you hit the wall many times with limitations in the Wave API (and Gadget API) in terms of achieving what “could” be possible versus what was possible within the limitations of the current Wave sandbox implementation.
I envision BAM/alerting scenarios as an obvious Wave fit. I can also see Wave as a natural language, interactive, and collaborative search/discuss/solve environment, with the simultaneous participation of expert “robots” and expert “humans”, tapping into the collective electronic and cerebral knowledge that’s available to help in real-time decision support. That’s an area that we’re currently doing some work…
Best,
Rick Bullotta
appreciate your feedback, you certainly know what it takes to go from nothing to something… 🙂 There are always hiccups, of course, and there are always limitations. It comes down to understanding how much of a constraint technology is to achieving the original vision. And that ratio is not too bad here. We do have a range of other prototypes that support some of the things you mention, watch this space…
Cheers,
Alex
From the discussions I’ve had with the Wave team, the JSON API that is to be released in the next few weeks should dramatically improve the ability for external apps to interact with Wave. At that point we should start feeling like Wave is less “alpha” and more “beta”… 😉
Stay in touch!
Best,
Rick
Thanks.
currently, the models are persisted through Wave. Additionally, you can export them as shown in the screencam (as BPMN 2.0 XML). It then comes down to using an appropriate tool for managing xmls in order to achieve what you suggest.
Cheers,
Alex
Is Gravity using Aris to draw the business process?
Regards,
Mel
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Twitter Marketing Campaign
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I’m working on my presentation on SAP and Wave for the virtual community day. I hope we can find a way to demo your gadget during this presentation.
/daniel
I very impressed about Gravity.
So I want to check about Google Wave but unfortunately Google requires Invitation to participate the Google Wave.
Would you kindly send me the invitation for Google Wave? Please let me know is it possible or not.
My google accout is “haamee@gmail.com“.
Anyway It’s very fantastic works!!
Thank you in adavance for your helps.
BRs
thanks, appreciate the feedback. However, you will need to talk to Google directly to get a Wave account.
Best regards,
Alex
I’m already in googlewave. But now how can I test the Gravity tool?
Thanks,
Sergio
thanks for your feedback. At this stage Gravity is a prototype that is not publicly accessible. We’re working on it, but I’m afraid you’ll have to wait a bit longer.
Best regards,
Alex
I’ve been working on something similar for BPEL in the course of my PhD studies. A demo version of my collaborative BPEL editor is available here:
http://www-sr.informatik.uni-tuebingen.de/~held/ria.htm
I would find it interesting to exchange further thoughts on the subject.
See also:
M. Held and W. Blochinger.
Structured Collaborative Workflow Design.
In Future Generation Computer Systems – The International Journal of Grid Computing and E-Science, 25(6):638-653, 2009.
M. Held and W. Blochinger.
Collaborative BPEL Design with a Rich Internet Application.
In Proceedings of the 8th IEEE International Symposium on Cluster Computing and the Grid (CCGrid’08), Lyon, France, 19-22 May 2008, IEEE Computer Society.
This looks really interesting as the collaborative aspect is very important. I don’t know anything about Wave or Gravity but the collaboration looks a lot easier than a lot of the tools I’ve come across.
One comment I would make about the example is it’s not a good idea to have an exclusive split followed by a parallel merge.
As a BPMN user for nearly 4 years I’m passionate about using it effectively. It’s important to have good practice and governance in place as the ease of modelling in BPMN can quickly result in a heap of poorly formed models that are difficult to maintain.
I would like to know more about this project and am interested in collaborating.
thanks for pointing that out, it certainly means that Marvin’s not perfect yet… 🙂 It’s actually correct in the screencam, where we’ve used an and split and join for the last block. The screenshot above sneaked its way in from a previous recording, we’ll fix it.
Kind regards,
Alex
Maybe free?
Since Gravity is currently a prototype, this decision has not yet been made.
Regards,
Alex
What about the release date.
Do you have any idea about it?
similar answer, no decision yet. Sorry.
Regards,
Alex
Great job!
And now you made it even into ComputerWoche:
http://www.computerwoche.de/software/erp/1909237/?r=755627515898159&lid=57558#
SAP definitely needs more of this. Actually, I think there is much more than this, but we don’t tell it to the world often enough.
Thank you!
Regards,
Andreas
Cheers,
Alex
I can’t wait to try a beta release of Gravity
Best regards,
Manuel
When the users type in the comments as they define the business process their messages have to be added on the top of the message pile rather than at the end of it. This change is needed from user experience point of view, so that users don’t have to scroll down to check an message update.
Hope you read this message and reply !
thanks! It’s pretty much up to the user where they add comments, Wave is pretty generic in this regard. We appended them, others may want to respond inline, yet other to put it on the top of the stack. Also, the Gravity can be added to any blib, not just the top one…
Cheers,
Alex
Rosann Collins
that tool looks so great! It could help us a lot to design complex processes across diffent areas. I am looking forward to test it ASAP!
Kay
Gravity looks very intesting, definitely something I have to check out.
It would be great if it was possible to make a connection to SAP Solution Manager 7.1 from SAP Streamwork and synchronize the business process model to the enhanced business blueprint which is part of a Solution Manager implementation project?
It would even be interesting for a lot of other content that resides in Streamwork to be able to synchronize content to Solution Manager and include it in the Solution Documentation for example.
Kind regards
Tom