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Create a business process to add business context to Azure resources (preview)

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Important

This capability is in public preview and isn't ready yet for production use. For more information, see the Supplemental Terms of Use for Microsoft Azure Previews.

After you create an integration environment and an application group with existing Azure resources, you can add business information about these resources by adding flow charts for the business processes that these resources implement. A business process is a sequence of stages that show the flow through a real-world business scenario. This business process also specifies a single business identifer, such as a ticket number, order number, case number, and so on, to identify a transaction that's available across all the stages in the business process and to correlate those stages together.

If your organization wants to capture and track key business data that moves through a business process stage, you can define the specific business properties to capture so that you can later map these properties to operations and data in Standard logic app workflows. For more information, see What is Azure Integration Environments?

For example, suppose you're a business analyst at a power company. Your company's customer service team has the following business process to resolve a customer ticket for a power outage:

Conceptual diagram shows example power outage business process stages for customer service at a power company.

For each application group, you can use the process designer to add a flow chart that visually describes this business process, for example:

Screenshot shows process designer for business process tracking feature in an integration environment.

Although this example shows a sequential business process, your process can also have parallel branches to represent decision paths.

Prerequisites

Create a business process

  1. In the Azure portal, find and open your integration environment.

  2. On your integration environment menu, under Environment, select Applications.

  3. On the Applications page, select an application group.

  4. On the application group menu, under Business process tracking, select Business processes.

  5. On the Business processes toolbar, select Create.

    Screenshot shows Azure portal, application group, and business processes toolbar with Create new selected.

  6. On the Create business process pane, provide the following information:

    Property Required Value Description
    Name Yes <process-name> Name for your business process that uses only alphanumeric characters, hyphens, underscores, parentheses, or periods.

    Note: When you deploy your business process, the platform uses this name to create a table in the Data Explorer database that's associated with your application group. Although you can use the same name as an existing table, which updates that table, for security purposes, create a unique and separate table for each business process. This practice helps you avoid mixing sensitive data with non-sensitive data and is useful for redeployment scenarios.

    This example uses Resolve-Power-Outage.
    Description No <process-description> Purpose for your business process
    Business identifier Yes <business-ID> This important and unique ID identifies a transaction, such as an order number, ticket number, case number, or another similar identifier.

    This example uses the TicketNumber property value as the identifier.
    Type Yes <ID-data-type> Data type for your business identifier: String or Integer.

    This example uses the String data type.

    The following example shows the information for the sample business process:

    Screenshot shows pane for Create business process.

  7. When you're done, select Create.

    The Business processes list now includes the business process that you created.

    Screenshot shows Azure portal, application group, and business processes list with new business process.

  8. Now, add the stages for your business process.

Add a business process stage

After you create your business process, add the stages in that process.

Suppose you're an integration developer at a power company. You manage a solution for a customer work order processor service that's implemented by multiple Standard logic app resources and their workflows. Your customer service team follows the following business process to resolve a customer ticket for a power outage:

Conceptual diagram shows example power outage business process stages for customer service at a power company.

  1. From the Business processes list, select your business process, which opens the process designer.

  2. On the designer, select Add stage.

    Screenshot shows business process designer with Add stage selected.

  3. On the Add stage pane, provide the following information:

    Tip

    To quickly draft the stages in your business process, just provide the stage name, select Add, and then return later to provide the remaining values when you map the business process to a Standard logic app workflow.

    Property Required Value Description
    Name Yes <stage-name> Name for this process stage that uses only alphanumeric characters, hyphens, underscores, parentheses, or periods.
    Description No <stage-description> Purpose for this stage
    Show data source No True or false Show or hide the available data sources:

    - Logic app: Name for an available Standard logic app resource

    - Workflow: Name for the workflow in the selected Standard logic app resource

    - Action: Name for the operation that you want to select and map to this stage

    Note: If no options appear, the designer didn't find any Standard logic apps in your application group.
    Add property No None Add a property and value for key business data that your organization wants to capture and track:

    - Property: Name for the property, for example, CustomerName, CustomerPhone, and CustomerEmail. The platform automatically includes and captures the transaction timestamp, so you don't have to add this value for tracking.

    - Type: Property value's data type, which is either a String or Integer
    Business identifier Yes <business-ID>, read-only Visible only when Show data source is selected. This unique ID identifies a transaction, such as an order number, ticket number, case number, or another similar identifier that exists across all your business stages. This ID is automatically populated from when defined the parent business process.

    In this example, TicketNumber is the identifier that's automatically populated.

    The following example shows a stage named Create_ticket without the other values, which you provide when you map the business process to a Standard logic app workflow:

    Screenshot shows pane named Add stage.

  4. When you're done, select Add.

  5. To add another stage, choose one of the following options:

    • Under the last stage, select the plus sign (+) for Add a stage.

    • Between stages, select the plus sign (+), and then select either Add a stage or Add a parallel stage, which creates a decision branch in your business process.

    Tip

    To delete a stage, open the stage's shortcut menu, and select Delete.

  6. Repeat the steps to add a stage as necessary.

    The following example shows a completed business process:

    Screenshot shows process designer with completed business process stages.

  7. When you're done, on the process designer toolbar, select Save.

  8. Now, define key business data properties to capture for each stage and map each stage to an operation in a Standard logic app workflow so that you can get insights about your deployed resource.

Next steps