obtaining natural language descriptions of process specifications

Obtaining Natural Language Descriptions of Process Specifi cations

Final Presentation 04.02.2010Business Processes in the Real World 2009

Manuel BlechschmidtSupervisor: Artem Polyvyanyy

Obtaining Natural Language Descriptions of Process Specifications | Manuel Blechschmidt | 04.02.2010 | 13. November 2009

2

Model to Text Transformation

The process starts with the "read order" task. The business flow continues on split "a" with 3 parallel actions: First branch starts with do "check customer status" task and execute "print invoice". If condition "did customer status change?" holds then fulfill the "send letter to customer that his status was upgraded" task. Work on the "receive money from customer" task. The branch is finished. Second branch starts with do the "send customer coupon for next order" task. The branch is finished. Third branch starts with execute the "print packing slip" task. Repeat fulfill "get product from warehouse" task, afterwards do "envelope product with security foil" and finally do "put product in package until "all products in package?" condition holds. Work on the "close package and secure it with tape" task. The branch is finished. Join on split "a". The process is getting now a bit more complex and it has to be decided between 2 branches. First branch starts with do "ask dhl for shipping conditions" task. Afterwards follows merge point: "G1". Continue on branch. Execute "bring package to dhl" task. The branch is finished. Second branch starts with fulfill "ask ups for shipping conditions" task. The process reaches split "G0". It has to be decided to go to merge: "G1" or stay on the branch. Work on "bring package to ups" task. The branch is finished. Complex part is over. Continue with single flow. Do "wait a week" task and execute "check that package arrived".


3

Motivation

■ Text is understandable by anyone who is able to read(In germany ~100% worldwide 79% Source: OECD)

■ Text can be dispayed by small or old devices

■ Text can be used as labels for abstracted parts

■ Text can be kept in sync with visual diagram

■ Text can be further processed:

□ Text to speech

□ Language translations


4

Live Demonstration

DEMO


5

Which part of BPMN is supported in the generation process

■ The most common constructs which are used in over 50% of the bpmn models are [1]:

□ Sequence Flow, Task, End Event, and Start Event.

■ Sequence Flow, Task, End Event, Start Event, XOR Gateways and AND Gateways will be supported during text generation

■ In if and repeat-until cases text annotations will be used


6

Pseudo algorithm for text generation

■ Map structural patterns to linguistic patterns

■ Normalize BPMN diagram according to specification

■ Decompose business process into a parse tree with a structural extraction algorithm like SPQR [3]

■ Annotate additional information like child count and maximal depth of tree

■ Go recursively through the tree

□ Check the type of fragment you are passing at the moment– Based on the fragment apply linguistic patterns

□ Continue in the tree


7

Fragment types


8

Levels of complexity

■ S, P and R can have different dimensions of complexity

■ Found Dimensions:

□ (S,P,R) Amount of nodes

□ (S,P,R) Containess of other structures

□ (P,R) Number of branches– (P,R) Flow direction

□ (P,R) Used Gateway types

■ With these dimensions classes can be defined which will be mapped to different patterns


9

Mapping fragments to text – Q (trivial)

■ [X] “a”.

■ Replace [X] with synonym of “do”

■ Special handling

□ Start and End Events

□ Gateways

□ In rigid fragment


10

Mapping fragments to text - S (serial)

Class of serials without inner structure

2 nodes more then 2 nodes

Do „A“, [then execute „B“]+ and finally work on „C“

Class of serials with inner structure

Do „A“ continue with „C“

Do „A“. [TextForPFragment] Do „C“.


11

Mapping fragments to text – P (parallel)

GatewayXOR AND

Directconnection fromstart to end. (If)

Directconnection fromend to start.(repeat)

Do „A“ or do „B“ Do „A“ and do „B“ in parallel

if „condition“do „A“

repeat „A“ until „repeat-until-condition“


12

Mapping fragments to text – R (rigid)

■ Hypothesis:

□ Context changes are unproductive

■ Go through the rigid fragment in a depth-first-approach and mention the task in the order they appear

■ Possible heuristics:

□ Inline small context changes

□ Use diagram positions for heuristics


13

Experiment

■ The text shown on the first slide was given to the seminar students and the employees of the business process technology members with the request to recreate the business process

■ The most common mistake was that the repeat until loop was not correctly painted. Further start and end events where omitted.

■ Further a some of the participants feld free to add additional bpmn constructs which were not supported by the model to text engine yet


14

Conclusion and Outlook

■ An approach for generating text from bpmn model was shown

■ The algorithm maps structural patterns of process graphs to textual patterns

■ For the example process with a small experiment it could be shown that the text is quite understandable

■ Next Steps

□ Evaluate more models

□ Refine lingustic patterns

□ Extend language coverage


15

References

[1] zur Muehlen, Michael and Recker, Jan C. (2008): How Much Language is Enough? Theoretical and Practical Use of the Business Process Modeling Notation . In Proceedings 20th International Conference on Advanced Information Systems Engineering, Montpellier, France.

[2] Core Set of BPMN Elements http://www.bpmn.org/Samples/Elements/Core_BPMN_Elements.htm

[3] Artem Polyvyanyy, Sergey Smirnov, and Mathias Weske: The Triconnected Abstraction of Process Models

[4] Jussi Vanhatalo, Hagen Völzer, and Jana Koehler: The Refined Process Structure Tree

[5] Henrik Leopold (2010): Automatic Detection and Correction of Label Quality in EPCs


16

Architecture


17

Agenda

■ Motivation

■ Pseudo algorithm for text generation

■ Architecture

■ Evaluation

■ Further Research

■ Discussion


18

Parts of the tree which are generated

S - (3,11) : [(6,10), (10,11), (4,5), (3,4), (6,5), (8,7), (7,6), (9,8), (5,9)] C: 11 D: 0 MD: 3

Q - (3,4) : [(3,4)] C: 0 D: 1 MD: 0

Q - (4,5) : [(4,5)] C: 0 D: 1 MD: 0

P - (5,6) : [(6,5), (8,7), (7,6), (9,8), (5,9)] C: 6 D: 1 MD: 2

Q - (6,5) : [(6,5)] C: 0 D: 2 MD: 0

S - (5,6) : [(8,7), (7,6), (9,8), (5,9)] C: 4 D: 2 MD: 1

Q - (5,9) : [(5,9)] C: 0 D: 3 MD: 0

Q - (9,8) : [(9,8)] C: 0 D: 3 MD: 0

Q - (8,7) : [(8,7)] C: 0 D: 3 MD: 0

Q - (7,6) : [(7,6)] C: 0 D: 3 MD: 0

Q - (6,10) : [(6,10)] C: 0 D: 1 MD: 0

Q - (10,11) : [(10,11)] C: 0 D: 1 MD: 0


19

Evaluation


20

Evaluation

obtaining natural language descriptions of process specifications

Technology

dhl task

ups task

oecd text

motivation3 text

tape task

customer status task

manuel blechschmidtsupervisor

visual diagram text