Process automation enables businesses
to choreograph processes across disparate applications, people, and
systems to remove inefficiencies, optimize costs, ensure compliance,
and boost productivity.
Build Forge automates, orchestrates,
manages, and tracks processes within the assembly line of product
development. It is commonly used to automate software build and package
processes.
This section describes a human model for processes and maps to
Build Forge features.
Human model
These roles make up a human-based
model of process automation.
- Work: the available work to be done is a set of documented processes.
Each process is made up of tasks.
- Coordinator: the coordinator "runs" the work. The
coordinator selects a process to run, and then examines the tasks
in order. For each task, the process defines which worker should perform
it. The coordinator hands the task to the worker and waits for the
result.
- Workers: the worker performs the task defined in
the process.
Build Forge model
The human-based model
maps to the Build Forge model as follows:
- Work: a work process is defined in a Build Forge project object.
Each project contains one or more step objects. Steps in a
project correspond to tasks in a process in the human model.
- Coordinator: the coordinator is the running Build Forge
software. It contains a component called the process engine. When
you start a project in Build Forge, the process engine runs it as
a job object. A job is simply a running project.
- Workers: workers are host computers. They are represented
in Build Forge by server objects. The host must have an agent installed
on it.
This is a very simplified model.
- Build Forge contains many other object types to support process
automation. Users, authorizations, and other objects that support
servers and projects are all stored in the database. Parts of Build
Forge are also stored in the database, for example UI widgets. The
database must be running for Build Forge to run.
- Projects and steps can be configured to run in many different
ways to support complex processes with complex dependencies and workflow.
Projects can run other projects, and steps themselves can run projects.
- Steps and projects can dynamically select servers, based on criteria
data that is part of the server definition. For example, a step could
choose which server to run on based on whether it was running Windows
or UNIX/Linux. Servers can also be configured as a pooled resource,
so a step would choose a server based on its current availability
or load.
Build Forge components to install
To use
Build Forge, these components must be installed:
- Database: Build Forge uses the database to store all of the objects
that it uses.
- Build Forge: a set of technologies that govern access to the database,
run UI code, and perform the work of running jobs.
- Agents: you install agent software on each host that will perform
work.
- Web Browser: users typically access Build Forge through a console
presented in a web browser.