PAFnow Process Explorer¶

The PAFnow Process Explorer visualizes your business process automatically in a process flow. It is the central element of the PAFnow Report. You can find it on all report pages where it will show you different aspects of your process flow. This helps you to evaluate and understand your as-is process performance including all paths and branches. The PAFnow Process Explorer also enables you to filter for individual process steps or paths to gain deeper insights.

This is the icon of the PAFnow Process Explorer in the visualizations pane:

How to get started¶

The PAFnow Process Explorer needs two pieces of information to work properly: Source and Target. It also has extra features (e.g. slider) that require additional information and completely optional fields which you can add if you want to display more information in your process flow. Before you can use the Process Explorer you need to drag the required fields into their respective buckets.

How to use¶

Once you have selected the required fields (and any optional fields you want to add) for the PAFnow Process Explorer, you can start to use its different features to analyze your process.

Conformance Check¶

The Conformance check measures how well a model compares to the event log in which the executed events are recorded. Our Process Explorer enables you to define your model and compare it to the executed processes.

After defining your model, you can evaluate different states of your process flows. The results are generated by calculating the so-called Fitness, which indicates the cost relationship between your reference model and a specific case. Our calculated Fitness is number between 0 and 1 (displayed as absolute value). The lower the score, the more different the specific case and the reference model are. We use the following formula to calculate the Fitness :

In accordance to this formula, we calculate the cost that is required to obtain the target model (CostOfCase) for a specific case (c) and divide it by the cost that this specific case would have in worst case (CostOfCaseInWorstCase). The worst case as such would be if no process step of the case matches the reference model. A case not matching any of the process steps shown by the reference model would have a Fitness of 0. If the case matches the target model exactly, the CostOfCase would be 0 and therefore the Fitness would be 1.

A fitness of 100% indicate that only conform steps are used in the selected process; as such measures of less than 100% include process steps marked as non-conform either by you, e.g. via right-click on the process step, or the conform process reference model.

The result donut in the upper right corner of the Process Explorer shows the average Fitness, which is the sum of the individual Fitness of a single case divided by the total number of cases reviewed in the selection.

If you hover the mouse over the result donut, you will get more information about the result in form of a tooltip.

You can display or hide the skipped model movements using the last button in the conformance menu .

Multi-Layout (Legend)¶

The multi-layout is used to visualize grouped processes that are set via the legend field (see). There are three different ways to create a grouped process flow: Unique-Highlight, All-In-One and Side-By-Side.

Unique-Highlight¶

The unique path between two processes (for example, the path of an unique vendor) is highlighted.

All-In-One¶

The process flow is visualized with multiple paths between processes (e.g. each path correspond to each vendor).

Side-By-Side¶

Multiple process flows are visualized next to each other by legend (e.g. each process flow corresponding to a single vendor).

Filter¶

The Process Explorer provides many filter options. You can select one or more (using CTRL) process steps or paths in the process flow and apply filters via right-click.

Filter Pane¶

The filter pane shows all set filters. As you can see, you can set multiple filters at the same time.

There are three types of filters:

• Include All filters
• Include Any filters
• Exclude filters

You can delete a single filter by clicking on the -button when hovering over a set filter:

To remove all filters of one type, hover over the type you want to clear and click the trash-can-symbol:

To remove all set filters, hover over the filter-icon itself and click the trash-can-symbol:

Filter Preview¶

If filter preview is activated under Advanced, the desired filter is highlighted while moving with the mouse over the filter option in the context menu.

Slider¶

In order to use the slider you have to fill in the Edge Volume bucket and Variants bucket (see Required Fields).

The slider in the Process Explorer can be used to increase or decrease the complexity of the process picture. When you start analyzing you process, the slid control buttons are set to the very left, this way only showing a graph with minimal complexity. You see the most common Happy path of your process. If you want to increase the complexity of your graph, just move the right slid control button to the right. Hereby, you add more paths to the picture including nodes and edges of the Not Happy path. By sliding completely to the right you can see the complete picture of the process for all your cases and variants.

In case you are only interested in the less common Not Happy paths of your process, you can also keep the right end of you slider where it is and move the left slide control button to the right side. To evaluate a window of processes between the two extremes, you can shift your set slider and move the bar in both directions.

Minimap¶

The minimap indicates the zoom state and viewing area of the whole process flow.

Tooltip¶

When you hover with the mouse-pointer over a path or process step, you will see the so-called tooltip. It displays your additional numerical and temporal information about the selected element. These have been specified under Edge Labels and Node Attributes.

The Process Explorer supports the Report Tooltip functionality of Microsoft Power BI, we refer to Microsoft Power BI - Report Tooltip for detailed information how to setup your tooltips. Default tooltips for the path will be replaced with your defined Report Tooltip.

Search Function¶

In the search bar you can search for individual process steps. The process steps containing your keyword are highlighted. By pressing Enter at the end of your search, the Process Explorer will zoom in on the found nodes.

Zoom Behavior¶

You can zoom in and out of the process flow by turning the mouse wheel up and down while the mouse is over the viewport. The process flow can also be dragged by holding the left mouse button.

Navigation and zooming can also be performed with the keyboard, using the arrow keys (↑↓→←) to navigate and the plus/minus (+ -) key to zoom.

You can also zoom-in using the button in the lower left of the visual area with and zoom-out using . By pressing the complete process flow is displayed.

Variant Indicator¶

Only successors	Only predecessors	Sucessors and predecessors
Shows the successor of the process node or edge clicked.	Shows the predecessor of the process node or edge clicked.	Shows the successor and the predecessor of the process node or edge clicked.

Highlight¶

You can set a highlight for nodes and/or edges to color them depending on the values in the bucket. You can also change to different scales when using the formatting tab for different color-mappings:

There you have 4 choices:

Outlier¶

When selecting the outlier scale function, you can also set the outlier factor. It is used to calculate the 25^th (Q25) and 75^th quantile (Q75) and detects outliers based on the inner quartile range (IQR). That is:

Values outside 1.5 (Outlier factor) IQRs of both the Q25 and the Q75 are defined to be outliers The outlier factor can be controlled via settings

Deviation Highlight¶

Highlights and shows the absolute differences based on the selected data points compared to the unselected ones (similar to the Root-Cause-Analyzer). It can be activated in the formatting tab under Advanced/Deviation Highlight.

BPMN Export¶

To export your current graph as a BPMN model, just press the Export to BPMN button in the toolbar. A saving dialog will open up in the PAFnow Companion and you can choose where to save the BPMN model.

Specification¶

Required Fields:¶

In order to use the Process Explorer, you have to drag the required fields into the respective buckets.

Optional Fields¶

To use the additional functionality of the Process Explorer, use the following optional field

Formatting¶

In the formatting tab you can personalize and customize the PAFnow Process Explorer according to your preferences. We show and explain the different possibilities below.

Themes¶

Nodes¶

Edges¶

Conformance Check¶

Legend¶

Data colors¶

Layout¶

Advanced¶

Cache¶

This cache is used to store complex methods that take time, such as the layout, to speed up future updates.

Slider¶

Search¶