User:Hummel-riegel/SRF Process

Process format is a format bringing together the MediaWiki Graphviz extension and Semantic MediaWiki. It allows Semantic MediaWiki's inline queries to display process graphs.

You might also be interested in exporting data in pnml for Horus or individuals walking through process.

Requisites

Installed and running Semantic Mediawiki Extension, download from here
Installed and running Mediawiki extension GraphViz, download from here
Installed and running Semantic Result Formats Extension, download from here
for templates you might also need Extension:ParserFunctions

alternatively you can get the semantic extensions (and many more) simple within the Semantic Bundle

Install instructions

Get the follwing files

and put that into /extensions/SemanticResultFormats/Process.

Get the follwing files

user:hummel-riegel/SRF_Process/helpers/process_form.php

and put that into /extensions/SemanticResultFormats/Process/helpers.

Get the follwing files

and put that into /extensions/SemanticResultFormats/Process/templates.

Add the following to your LocalSettings.php:

$smwgResultFormats['process'] = 'SRFProcess';
require_once "$IP/extensions/SemanticResultFormats/Process/SRF_Process.php";
require_once "$IP/extensions/SemanticResultFormats/Process/SRF_SpecialCreateProcess.php";
require_once "$IP/extensions/SemanticResultFormats/Process/SRF_SpecialCreateProcess.i18n.php";

Templates and Forms

It is not necessary but recommended to have a look at our bundled Templates. They can be found in the templates-folder. They can be easily imported with Special:Import and make modelling much simpler.
There can be found:

Process_Form_Package.xml -> Provides some useful forms that help creating a process with Special:CreateProcess.
Process_Extension_Package.xml -> Provides templates to display some infoboxes and to structure the data of the Forms. See importet page "Process Extension Overview" for all pages related to the process printer.
Process_Extension_Example_Package.xml -> Here we provide an example process to take a look.

Usage

The use of the templates makes some of the following redundant, if you just use the basic features.

Input

The process extension requires a number of wiki pages to be categorized as "Process Steps" (= nodes in a process graph) and to be annotated with properties denoting their connection to other nodes. Also, they should be categorized with the name of the process they belong to. A query as below then generates a sparse matrix with process nodes in the first column and their interconnections in the other columns. Setting the output "format" to "process" will render the matrix as a process graph.

Both, process specification & annotation as well as rendering the result graph is typically implemented using templates (see Templates section).

Example query which generated the example output shown below (book order process):

{{#ask: [[Category:Process Step]] [[Category:{{PAGENAME}}]]   
| ?has OrSuccessor=hasorsuccessor
| ?has Successor=hassuccessor
| ?has ConTrueSuccessor=hascontruesuccessor
| ?has ConFalseSuccessor=hasconfalsesuccessor
| ?has Condition=hascondition
| format=process
| graphlink=yes }}

{{Process
| Owner=Some person
}}

Additional query parameters (see also Extension:Semantic_Result_Formats/graph_format)

Parameter	Type	default	Notes
format	String ("process")	table	enables the process UI
graphname	String	QueryResult	Names the graph
rankdir	LR,RL,TB or BT	LR	Specifies the direction of the graph L=left,R=right,T=top,B=bottom
graphsize	pointf	none	Specifies the size of the graph
clustercolor	String	No	Colors clusters in the process graph
debug	Yes or No	No	If debug code should be shown
graphvalidation	Yes or No	No	If graph should be validated
showresources	Yes or No	No	If ressources of a process node (defined by producesresource/usesresource) should be shown
showroles	Yes or No	No	If roles of a process node (defined by hasrole) should be shown
showstatus	Yes or No	No	If status for a process step (defined by hasstatus) should be displayed using one of five icons (0%, 25%, 50%, 75%, 100%)
showredlinks	Yes or No	No	If process steps without an underlying wiki page should be highlighted
redlinkcolor	String	red?	Label color for showredlinks
highlight	String (name of wiki page)	None	Will highlight node from the result graph, if label matches the highlight parameter value
highlightcolor	String	blue?	Label color for highlight
showcompound	Yes or No	Yes	If a process node containing a sub-process should be highlighted. Requires processcat to be set (see below) and the query result needs to contain a category column (e.g. `?Category`)
processcat	String	None	Name of the category used for processes (e.g. "Process") - required for showcompound

Output

The output would be the actual diagram. However, internally, the printer passes the GraphViz markup (as below) to GraphViz ($result = renderGraphviz($graphInput);) which then generates the diagram.

You could also have the process structure exported to a PNML for the use with the Horus Business Modeler. (see more here)

Examples

To see an example in action, go to Process-Demo-Wiki. (not available anymore)