The business process modeling method presented in this volume was named after Hagenberg, where fundamental research on business process modeling was carried out at a research institute that is situated in the Softwarepark Hagenberg.

Chapter 1, an introduction, contains a comprehensive overview of the attempts at enhancing and extending the business process modeling notation (BPMN) standard [1] to cover all relevant parts of an enterprise architecture. The literature overview and the references are valuable for researchers in the field. The Hagenberg method, the so-called H-BPM, aims at a comprehensive extension of the BPMN. The comparative study, summarized in a table, demonstrates that no other proposed method would provide such extensive coverage.

The basic idea of a deontic classification for tasks that will be performed by human actors is introduced. The deontic classification is based on the deontic logic. Such a task can be obligatory, optional, alternative to other tasks, or forbidden. A graphical notation is developed to stress the categorization by colors and letters. Thereby, the process diagrams have a simpler structure and are more understandable for readers.

Chapter 3 focuses on actors and roles, their access rights, and their permissions to carry out specific tasks related to human activities. Exploiting the formalized approach, the assignment between tasks and users, moreover a taxonomy of user roles and their relationships, can be described. The association between roles and tasks can be formulated as (business) rules whereby the enforcement of the rules can be made operational at the automated level of the given workflow.

In recent information systems, the man-machine interaction plays a decisive role. Chapter 4 deals with user interfaces and with those human actors who actually carry out tasks. The selected approach uses a worklist, for example, a hierarchy of the potential tasks that can be chosen by the human actors at a certain point of the man-machine dialogue, and the human actor may follow alternative paths depending on the situation, previous activities, and decisions. In this way, a dynamic flavor is added to the workflow description and business process modeling.

Chapter 5 discusses the problem of events. There are generally two main categories of events, enterprise-level and information-system-level events. The BPMN standard refines further the notion of events and defines the event node concept in the graph of a business process model (message, signal, error, cancel, and so on). The proposed solution tries to handle the immanent discrepancy between the pure human workflow and the partly or wholly automated workflow. The typical problem that arises is that the human actors may get many more messages, “triggers,” at once than they can treat properly, or their avatars in cyberspace may receive messages “in absence” of the human actors, even though their representatives in cyberspace are inactive. Therefore, the flow of processes may be stopped as one of the processes waits in a pending status. The proposed solution is the use of an “event pool.” The human actor may subscribe to a pool of potential choices, or he or she selects event triggers from pools in any order at his or her discretion.

Chapter 6 discusses the integration issue of models. The previous chapters contained proposals for the extension of the base standard and model of BPMN. Consequently, several models were created. The chapters discuss the interrelationships among the newly defined models and the way they can work together in an integrated manner. The chapter shows the feature of “the enhanced process platform” that supports the enhanced communication method between the various models in runtime. Chapter 7 provides the description of the detailed architecture and components of the enhanced process platform.

The book concludes with a summary about H-BPM in chapter 8 and possible future works.

The book will interest researchers and even practitioners in the consultancy business who work in the field of business process management and modeling and workflow definition. It is worth studying for those who look for more accurate, usable, and user-friendly solutions for defining automated workflows and business processes.