Automating Business Processes with TROPOS 'Active'

The key to a good business system is ensuring it works with and for your business processes, supporting you in achieving your business objectives, not locking you into a fixed way of working so that you become a slave to it, just feeding in data! TROPOS Active enables you to configure event triggers from within your TROPOS solution so that it is initiating and prompting for action when required - user decision/authorisation, interface to be invoked etc. Your system becomes active in driving your business processes rather than just a passive data repository and transaction processing system.

TROPOS Active helps you optimise your business processes, removing mundane administrative steps, and enabling more timely and reliable communication, proactive alerting, warning and escalation across your business, speeding up supply chain velocity and reducing costs. Information no longer remains stuck in one place, inaccessible to those in other parts of the business or supply chain who really need it.

The TROPOS Active engine allows you to define processes, events, rules and formats, and configure automated responses to these. For example, the arrival of a sales order could trigger an email alert to a planner, the confirmation of a delivery date might automatically result in a mail being sent to the customer, or an alert coming in to the system from the shopfloor might prompt the planner to reschedule production. TROPOS Active can link to workflow, or use messaging protocols such as XML to automate processes and system interfaces that previously relied on manual inputs. Best of all, this process automation is straight forward, configuration can be done without the need for any database-level coding, dramatically easing the cost of implementation.

Based on user defined rules and conditions TROPOS Active can automatically trigger:

• An e-mail
• A TROPOS mail
• The printing of a user defined document (TROPOSForm)
• An interface/activity in Oracle Workflow
• An interface to a third party application
• The automatic processing of dependent TROPOS transactions

TROPOS Active comes as a fully packaged toolset, that you can be trained in the use and support of. A five day workshop takes one of your business processes and applies each of the different TROPOS Active techniques, leaving you with a working solution to base further configuration on. Alternatively SSI can provide and support fully configured TROPOS Active based solutions for you.

TROPOS Active is one component of the TROPOS Customisation and Configuration toolset that enables customers to create 'No Compromise' solutions for their businesses, whilst still getting the benefits of a package solution. The other TROPOS Customisation and Configuration tools include:

• TROPOS 'SDK' (Software Development Kit) - The configuration of custom PC User Interfaces
• TROPOS Application Designer: The configuration of custom Browser Interfaces
• TROPOSForm: The customisation of the content and layout of business documents
• TROPOS Interfacing & Integration Kit: The building of system interfaces into and out of TROPOS

TROPOS Active includes the following key features:

• User and Process Definitions
  • User Role
  • Target e-mail accounts
  • Business Process Routes
• TROPOS Active workflow engine
  • Event & action definition
  • Action triggering rules
  • Message formats
  • Monitors activity and triggers actions
• TROPOS Mail
  • Simple mail for non e-mail users
• e-mail Interface
  • Standard interface to e-mail servers*
• TROPOS Outgoing Interfaces
  • Interface definition
  • Data mapping
  • Configuration of interface management

*Integration with existing third party e-mail servers is subject to survey.