“VTMine for Visio”: Graphical Tool for Modeling in Process Mining

Abstract

Process-Aware Information Systems (PAIS) is a special class of the IS intended for the support the tasks of initialization, end-to-end management and completion of business processes. During the operation such systems accumulate a large number of data that are recorded in the form of the event logs. Event logs are a valuable source of knowledge about the actual behavior of a system. For example, there can be found information about the discrepancy between the real and the prescribed behavior of the system; to identify bottlenecks and performance issues; to detect anti-patterns of building a business system. These problems are studied by the discipline called “Process Mining”.The practical application of the process mining methods and practices is carried out using the specialized software for data analysts. The subject area of the process analysis involves the work of an analyst with a large number of graphical models. Such work will be more efficient with a convenient graphical modeling tool. The paper discusses the principles of building a graphical tool “VTMine for Visio” for the process modeling, based on the widespread application for business intelligence Microsoft Visio. There are presented features of the architecture design of the software extension for application in the process mining domain and integration with the existing libraries and tools for working with data. The application of the developed tool for solving various types of tasks for modeling and analysis of processes is demonstrated on a set of experimental schemes.