Towards a Generic BPMS User Portal Definition for the Execution of Business Processes

Business Process Management Systems (BPMS) provide support for the business process (BPs) lifecycle, from modeling to executing and evaluating BPs. Key elements provided within a BPMS are a process engine where BP models are executed and a web portal for user's interaction providing means to manage a work list, taking and completing tasks, among other functionalities. Most BPMS portals provide a set of core features for users to manage their work lists, as well as service-oriented access to their process engine, which is tightly coupled. In this context it seems possible to define a generic BPMS user portal which can be integrated (loosely coupled) with potentially any process engine for the execution of business processes. In this paper we define such generic BPMS user portal based on a unified data model and a generic process engine API. We also show the feasibility of these ideas through the development of a prototype.