The Screen Process Extractor is used to analyze activities performed by the user and make business decisions based on this analysis.
Business Activity entities are created in ApplinX Designer and are used by the Screen Process Extractor. The Business Activity entity enables defining rules and conditions that are later searched for when analyzing trace files during the process. Once these rules and conditions are met, the relevant information regarding the activity is detailed in an XML file. The XML file is then used by ARIS PPM to analyze business processes.
A relevant license is required to implement this feature.
To complete the process extraction you need to:
Create a new ApplinX application (including host and repository). Refer to Creating an Application in the Designing and Developing an Application documentation.
Activate the Terminal Emulation Proxy (refer to Application Configuration Parameters > Host Parameters > Terminal Emulation Proxy in the Reference Guide) and configure trace file recordings (refer to Recording Trace Files in the Designing and Developing an Application documentation).
Change all the end users' terminal emulation host addresses to the ApplinX server address using the port which is configured in the Terminal Emulation Proxy Configuration.
Identify screens: define the screen and fields that are relevant for the business activities that you intend to track. You can import screen maps if you are using the supported map format. Refer to Screens in the Designing and Developing an Application documentation.
Define business activities: An activity is a set of rules and conditions which together create a business activity. Refer to Business Activity Entity in the Designing and Developing an Application documentation.
Define the configuration parameters that are to be used when analyzing trace files. Refer to Defining Configuration Parameters for Extracting Activities from Trace Files below.
Run an analysis on a trace file (either via a wizard in the Designer, typically used when developing, or via a batch file, typically used for the production environment). Refer to Extracting Business Process Activities from Trace Files below.
Analyze the outcome of the activity using ARIS PPM. Refer to PPM below.
ApplinX enables extracting business activities from trace files. To do this, ApplinX goes over the recorded sessions (in the form of trace files) and looks for instances of the defined business activities. Whenever an instance of an activity is identified, all relevant information required for PPM is written to an XML file. A summary of the information is written to a CSV file and a report of the process is displayed in the ApplinX console. Debugging information can be found in ApplinX server log.
Business activities can be extracted from the trace files either using a wizard or by running a batch file. The wizard can also be used to configure the desired parameters for extracting the business activities.
To extract activities from trace files using the wizard
Right-click on the node of the relevant application and select . The wizard is displayed.
Select whether to base the extraction process on previously defined configuration parameters (refer to Defining Configuration Parameters for the Extracting Business Process Activities analysis below).
Select the trace file(s) or folder to be analyzed. Select whether once the file has been analyzed, the file name should indicate this by changing the extension to ".analyzed".
Select the output folder where the analysis PPM activities XML files are to be saved.
Select the log level of the analysis log (Debug, Errors, Info and Warnings). Notice that the location of the log file is displayed in the wizard.
Click . The Selection of Business Activity Entities screen is displayed.
Select whether to extract all business activities (default) or only selected activities.
Click . Determine whether to run the analysis immediately. Determine whether to save these settings in a configuration parameters file, and define its name and location.
Click .
The extraction process will begin. A progress bar is displayed indicating the progress of the process. When clicking , the process will stop at the current point and no additional trace files will be analyzed. Once the process is completed or stopped, an XML file is created for each trace file, in the location you defined. This file contains all the events found in the analyzed trace file.
To extract activities from trace files using a batch file (using the
command prompt window)
Open a command prompt window.
Change the current directory to the <ApplinX home>/Utilities directory.
Type "extract_activities.bat" or "extract_activities.sh" followed by your required parameters. (The minus sign and letter should precede the value to distinguish between the parameters. The order of the parameters is not significant.)
| Parameter | Description | Default |
|---|---|---|
| -s | Server address | 127.0.0.1 |
| -p | Server port | 2323 |
| -u | ApplinX user name (required parameter) | |
| -w | ApplinX user password | Empty by default |
| -a | ApplinX application name (required parameter) | |
| -x | The name of the XML file to use for the analysis process | Default.xml |
| -d | A semi-colon separated list of folders and gct files to analyze | The "TraceFilesLocations" specified in the XML file |
Using the Extract Business Activities wizard, you can define configuration parameters that can be used for analyzing trace files. These parameters are saved to an XML file and can later be used when analyzing trace files either using the wizard or from batch files.
Note:
It is possible to configure the parameters and immediately after,
run the analysis by selecting the relevant check boxes in the last screen of
the wizard.
To define the configuration parameters for the activity extraction
process
Right-click on the node of the relevant application and select . The wizard is displayed.
Select an existing configuration file which will provide the basic parameters for your configuration. Once you select a file the parameters defined in the selected configuration file are entered in the fields.
Select the trace file(s) or folder to be analyzed. Select whether once the file has been analyzed, the file name should indicate this by changing the extension to ".analyzed".
Select the output folder where the analysis PPM activities XML files are to be saved.
Select the log level of the analysis log (Debug, Errors, Info and Warnings). Notice that the location of the log file is displayed in the wizard.
Click . The Selection of Business Activity Entities screen is displayed.
Select whether to extract all business activities or only selected activities.
Click . Determine whether to run the analysis immediately. Determine whether to save these settings in a configuration parameters file, and define its name and location
Click .
Analyze activities and processes in ARIS PPM: Ensure that the XML files that were created are located in the ARIS PPM installation directory. These files are loaded into PPM, where they can play a part in analyzing a broader business process. Refer to the ARIS PPM documentation for further details.