Handling cases with IBM BPM Advanced V8.5.5

Welcome to this conceptual video about the new case management capabilities available with IBM Business Process Manager Advanced V8.5.5..

The welcome screen shows the title of the video "Handling cases with IBM® Business Process Manager Advanced V8.5.5" and "Copyright 2014, IBM® Corporation"

The new Basic Case Management function is an add-on feature which allows you to build business applications to handle cases using the new web-based editor in IBM Process Designer.

A case is a project that starts and finishes over time to resolve a problem. A case management application often includes a combination of structured workflows, ad-hoc tasks, and document processing.

A large folder is shown, labeled "Case 1230". A schematic drawing of a simple process diagram is displayed on top of the folder, followed by some unconnected activities labeled "optional task". Finally, several pieces of paper appear and disappear into the folder.

This video introduces you to the case solution developed in IBM BPM and used by Ingrid, a Customer Service Representative for Insurance-4-U.

One of Ingrid's jobs is to respond to calls from customers looking to make a claim about a damaged automobile.

A photo of a woman labeled "Ingrid" appears on the screen.

Other people who might be involved in processing a claim include Wendy, the adjuster who might review the claim depending on its size and complexity, and Mike, one of the fraud investigators who will perform the fraud investigation if either Wendy or Ingrid indicate that one is needed.

Photos of people labeled "Wendy" and "Mike" appear.

The Work tab of the Process Portal is shown with Ingrid logged in.

Ingrid gets a call from Jeff, a policy holder who has had an automobile collision in his 2010 Honda Civic. She launches the NewClaim case application from her Work tab.

The user clicks NewClaim and the "Setup - CreateNewClaimUI" interface opens.

She fills out the details that Jeff gives her about the accident as well as the details about Jeff's policy coverage.

The user enters the Customer ID, Policy Number, Rental Car Entitlement, Vehicle Type, and Replacement Value fields, then clicks OK.

From the Process Instance Details UI, Ingrid can see all the pertinent details for this claim, the related documents, and tasks that need to be completed, as well as history information about anything that's already been done related to this case.

The Instance Details UI for the claim is displayed. The data section is highlighted, followed by the documents section, and the task section.

The stream widget is expanded to show the activities that have already been started.

In the Activities section, she can see the tasks that she is able to start based on what she knows about the case. Because Jeff's policy includes a car rental entitlement, she can book him a rental car. She can also submit the claim for fraud investigation if anything strikes her as suspicious with the claim. Right now, one task that needs to be completed is obtaining a repair estimate.

The Activities section is highlighted. The Book Car Rental activity is highlighted as it is mentioned. The Submit Claim for Investigation is highlighted as it is mentioned.

The auto repair shop that Jeff has had his car towed to faxes Ingrid an estimate. She opens the Get Repair Estimate task, adds the (repair estimate) document to the case, and enters the total repair cost amount, $6000, and clicks OK.

Ingrid opens the Get Repair Estimate task.

Ingrid clicks the + in the Documents section and the Add Document window opens. She browses for a document called "Stan's Auto Repair Estimate 534.pdf." She selects Repair Estimate as the document type and enters "Repair Estimate for 2010 Honda Civic" as the document title, then clicks Add. The new document appears in the documents section. She opens the document to show the estimate that she has been faxed with a total of $6000, then closes it.

In the Get Repair Estimate task, she fills in a repair estimate amount of $6000.

After the repair estimate cost has been added to the case, the case is ready for review and a Review Claim for Approval task is automatically created.

A Review Claim for Approval task appears in the Tasks list.

Ingrid decides that the repair amount is higher than she is able to approve, so she reassigns the reviewing task to Wendy, a more senior adjuster.

The user clicks the Assign button on the Review Claim for Approval task. and types Wendy in the Assigned to field and clicks Assign.

Wendy receives notification that she's been assigned a task to review Jeff's claim.

Wendy's photo appears in the top right corner of the Process Portal. A notification appears alerting her to her new task. She clicks on the link to take her to the Review Claim for Approval task.

Wendy can see all of the documents related to the claim and the work that has already been done. A police report has also been added to the case since Ingrid created the claim.

During her review of the claim, Wendy notices some irregularities. She wants to see all the details of the claim so far, so she returns to the Process Details Instance page.

She opens the Police Report document CollisionReport.pdf then closes it.

From the action menu, she clicks View Instance.

She returns to the Process Details Instance page.

Based on what she sees, she decides to send the claim to for fraud investigation, creating an Investigate Claim task for the Fraud Investigators team.

In the stream widget, the user adds the comment: @Mike The driver of the other car has the same last name as the policy holder. I'd like Fraud Investigation to look into this.

She goes to clicks Submit Claim for Investigation.

Mike, from the Fraud Investigators team, decides there are no issues with the claim, and then notifies Wendy and Ingrid in the stream, and by indicating that there is no evidence of fraud.

Mike's photo appears in the top right corner to indicate that he is looking at the Process Instance Details for the case.

The user opens the Investigate Claim task.

A note is added to the stream by Mike: Everything looks fine to me. and the user sets Evidence of Fraud to No.

Wendy approves the claim, and a task is created for Ingrid to notify Jeff of the decision.

Wendy's photo appears in the top corner of the Process Instance Details. The user launches the Review Claim For Approval task and sets the Claim Approved? field to Yes, clicks the Notify Claimant button.

A new task appears in the task list called Notify Claimant of Decision.

Let's take a brief look at the underlying case application that is used by Ingrid and her coworkers to do their work.

The Insurance-4-U case application, built using the IBM Case Designer, contains the NewClaim case type, the set of document types associated with a case, the user interfaces that will be presented to the case workers, the business data involved in the case, and the teams that will do the work.

The Web-based Case Designer interface is displayed. Each section of the library is expanded as it is mentioned.

Each case type has a set of activities to be performed, variables to hold case data, folders for organizing documents related to the case, and a set of views or interfaces that Ingrid and her team will interact with.

The user navigates to Cases > NewClaim. The NewClaim case type opens. The user navigates to the Views tab.

By default, IBM BPM provides a Case instance details user interface for every case type. If the Insurance-4-U organization wanted to customize the default interface that Ingrid and her co-workers see, or provide a different user interface for managers, they could do it here.

The Details UI views are highlighted and expanded as they are mentioned.

When Ingrid first launches a new case, she launches the CreateNewClaim human service that provides an interface for her to enter the initial data about the claim that will be used throughout the case instance.

The user expands the Launch UI views.

The user clicks on the CreateNewClaim human service which opens to the EnterData coach page to show the initial new claim UI. The user returns to the NewClaim case type.

After Ingrid has created a new case, there is a set of user activities that will need to be performed to complete the case.

The user navigates to the Activities tab.

There are five main activities in this case application, three required activities, Get Repair Estimate, Review Claim for Approval, and Notify Claimant of Decision, and two optional activities, Book Car Rental and Submit Claim for Fraud Investigation.

The activities are highlighted as they are mentioned.

The Get Repair Estimate activity has been configured to start automatically, so as soon as Ingrid creates the claim, a Get Repair Estimate task appears in her Task list. The Review Claim for Approval activity, however, has a precondition event that must occur before it can start.

The precondition says that this activity is started after the RepairCost variable is updated. This means that after someone, either Ingrid or another team member, updates the value for the repair cost, then the claim can be reviewed and a Review Claim for Approval task is automatically created.

The user selects the Review Claim for Approval activity and goes to the Preconditions tab.

In this application, the two optional activities are launched manually, which means that Ingrid or another co-worker can launch the activity depending on what they know about the case. Optional activities can also be configured to start automatically.

The user selects the Book Car Rental activity, and the manual option in the Behavior section of the Properties view is highlighted.

The Book Car Rental activity has a precondition expression defined for it.

The user goes to the Preconditions tab.

This expression says that the activity can only be started if the client's policy covers it (in other words, if the CarRentalEntitlement variable is set to "true".)

The expression is highlighted as it is mentioned.

Activities can be implemented by human services, linked processes or subprocesses, as exemplified by the Submit Claim for Investigation activity.

Let's drill down into the subprocess to see its contents.

The Submit Claim for Fraud Investigation activity is highlighted.

The user double-clicks the activity and the subprocess is displayed.

This single activity is performed by the Fraud Investigators team, which means that when Ingrid launches the activity, a new task is created and is assigned to the Fraud Investigators team to complete.

The user selects the Investigate Fraud task and the specification of "FraudInvestigators"for the Default Lane Team field is highlighted.

Notice that the order in which the claim processing activities are completed is not defined by sequence flows or gateways. Instead, the activities are started as a result of an event, such as the repair cost being specified, or by the case worker herself based on the knowledge she has of the case details.

Explicit flows can still be part of an application by calling BPDs from within an activity or by using subprocesses.

The user returns to the main Activities view for the NewClaim case type.

For more information about IBM Business Process Manager, visit these other official resources.

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• IBM SupportTV YouTube channel
• IBM Business Process Manager V8.5.5 documentation
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