Business Process Modeling is the discipline of representing the flow of information/materials between people and machines in an organization, their various tasks and responsibilities along with time, cost and quality measures. Business Process modeling tools are a vital part of BPM.
Here are free tools that can make you more productive.
Adobe LiveCycle
Compatible with Adobe Cloud, Adobe LiveCycle Enterprise Suite 4 is a higher-end BPM software that integrates the concepts of form platform and enterprise documentation. The objectives of using this software include processing of information, delivery of personalized communications, and effective protection of sensitive information. LiveCycle ES4 extends business processes to its users’ mobile workforce and clients, increasing productivity while broadening service access to users equipped with a desktop, smartphone, or tablet. It was earlier known as Adobe LiveCycle and acted as a central workstation connecting existing work processes and streamlining media delivery to other teams. It also offers a community connection portal and a social engagement platform.Learn more and compare products with Solutions Review’s Free Buyer’s Guide for Business Process Management.
Alfresco
Alfresco Process Services (powered by Activiti) is an enterprise BPM solution targeted at business people and developers. It is lightweight and incorporates a super fast BPMN 2.0 process engine for Java. At its core is a high-performance open-source business process engine based on Activiti with the flexibility and scalability to handle a wide variety of critical processes. Alfresco Process Services provides a robust suite of end-user tools and integrates with a range of enterprise systems, including Alfresco Content Services, Box, and Google Drive. Activiti is greatly optimized for dealing with technical and non-technical aspects, namely analysis, modeling, business process compatibility generation, and software creation and support.Learn more and compare products with Solutions Review’s Free Buyer’s Guide for Business Process Management.
ARIS Express
ARIS Express, by Software AG, is a free modeling software ideal for occasional users and beginners in the BPM space. With an intuitive user interface, modelers can work from the latest improvements in modeling assistances that enable instant results. Free training is available in the ARIS Community, which includes models for organizational structures, processes, application systems, data, etc. ARIS Express is based on the proven ARIS method. This free version will appeal to universities and vocational schools and BPM beginners, and occasional users. ARIS Express is not a limited demo or trial version but a free modeling software, a reasonable replacement for other drawing tools.Learn more and compare products with Solutions Review’s Free Buyer’s Guide for Business Process Management.
Bizagi
Bizagi Modeler is a free (single user) BPM tool to create, optimize and publish your workflow diagrams to increase efficiency and process governance across your organization. Modeler provides a good cloud collaboration environment as well, offering powerful and speedy drag-and-drop design tools. Gapping the bridge between business and IT encourages everyone’s involvement in process discussion. Bizagi Modeler also provides user access to review the process models anywhere on any device and provide real-time feedback. With centrally documented process models, employees can quickly learn those processes, improving compliance with your policies and procedures.Learn more and compare products with Solutions Review’s Free Buyer’s Guide for Business Process Management.
Bonita BPM
Bonita BPM provides you with free tools to build, run, monitor, and improve business apps. These apps can connect customized user interfaces with reliable back-office processes related to your data and create satisfying end-to-end user experiences. With Bonita BPM, users get everything they need to build process-based apps, from BPMN2.0, workflow modeling, and state-of-the-art drag-and-drop. Costly update cycles are a non-issue, as Bonia BPM can adapt in real-time as processes change. Bonitasoft is lightweight and implements a modular architecture backed up by a stronghold of the open-source community of more than 12,000 members for various query resolution requirements.Learn more and compare products with Solutions Review’s Free Buyer’s Guide for Business Process Management.
jBPM
jBPM is an open-source software that automates business processes and decisions. It has Apache Software License. jBPM’s business process tools allow users to model their business goals. It helps users by detailing the steps required to achieve a particular business goal. It uses a flowchart, which improves the visibility of the business logic. The flowcharts result in domain-specific visual representations that are easily understood by business people. jBPM’s workflow engine is light-weight and extensible. It is written in Java that allows users to perform business processes using the standard BPMN 2.0 specification. jBPM acts as a bridge between developers, business analysts, and end-users. The core capabilities of jBPM lie in the simplification of business logic. It converts business logic into reusable assets. jBPM offers a lot of features and tools to support the life cycle of business processes.
Features:
- History logging
- Management console supporting process instance management
- Integration with frameworks such as Spring (Boot), CDI/EJB, OSGi, etc.
- Task lists and the task form management
- Reporting
- Optional process repository to set up your process
- Complex business logic can be modeled
- Pluggable persistence based on JPA/JTA
- Transactions based on JPA / JTA
- Can be combined with the Drools project
- Supports one unified environment
- Supports adaptive and dynamic processes
- The eclipse-based and web-based editor
- Supports the graphical creation of your business processes
- Pluggable human task service to perform tasks that require human actors
- It offers both frameworks-standalone service or custom service
Bitrix24
Bitrix24 has become a go-to application when it comes to free Business Process Management (BPM) software. It delivers a set of standard business processes that don’t require deployment. The processes can be modified based on your company structure. Its business process designer lets users create any custom business process. Bitrix24 is also loaded with а set of BPM tools for sales and sales management automation. It is available for iOS and Android apps, Cloud and on-premise, API, and open-source code.
Features:
- The free version allows 12 users
- Ready to use in 30 seconds
- Standard BPM, Mobile BPM, Social BPM, and Custom BPM
- Task creation
- Free standard BPM such as Business Trips, Leave Requests, Expense Reporting, General Requests, Attendance Management, Purchase Requests, e-Orders, and Employee self-service
- Free Custom BPM such as State-driven BPM, Sequential BPM, Visual BP designer, Documents, Calendar events, CRM events, and PHP code (Available in self-hosted versions of Bitrix24)
- BPM with Task Automation such as Task creation from BP, Workgroups/Projects, Task templates, Tasks with subtasks, Recurring tasks, Gantt chart, Tasks with checklists,
- Mobile and Social BPM services like Discussions, Polling, Mobile BPM, Social intranet, Workgroups and Communications
RunaWFE
RunaWFE Free is a business process management system that is available to use for free. It is an open source BPM application delivered under the LGPL license. RunaWFE Free utilizes its own solutions and also some features of the JBoss jBPM project. RunWFE Free has a set of additional components to provide convenience to the end-user.
Features:
- Graphical business process designer
- Flexible system of role executors determination
- Web services support
- Convenient user web-interface
- Bots for automatic task execution
- Portlets support
- Support of Windows, Solaris, Linux, FreeBSD operational systems
- Heterogeneous enterprise applications integration
- Security system which allows integration of LDAP/MS Active Directory
- Localization on French, German, Italian, Chinese, Dutch, English, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, and Ukrainian languages
Modelio
Modelio is a foremost modeling environment that provides model assistance for businesses. It supports a wide range of models and diagrams. It has BPMN support integrated with UML. Modelio is an open source environment licensed under GPL v3. It combines both BPMN and UML support with dedicated diagrams to support business process modeling. It caters mostly to the needs of Code developers, Business architects, Software architects, System architects, and Analysts. Modelio is developed mostly in Java except for a small part of the code written in C++.
Features:
- Java code generator
- Uses an RCP/Eclipse-style project file structure
- Supports Java code generation
- Supports reverse Javadoc generation and Java automation.
- XMI import/export
- Modelio provides an XMI import/export feature
- Exchange UML2 models between different tools
- HTML model publishing
- RCP architecture
- Publish your models in HTML format with the HTML Publisher module
- Can be extended for any modeling technique, language, or methodology
- Scripting language support (Jython)
- Integrated support of the Jython scripting language for small scripts and macro definition, and online requests.
- It has a flexible extension mechanism that allows users to add Modelio modules to their configurations. A wide range of existing modules is available for download. For example:
- Java Designer: It has support for UML2 and Java 6.
- XSD Designer: Graphical modeling of XML schemas
- WSDL Designer: Graphical modeling of web services
- Togaf Architect: It has the support of the TOGAF Enterprise Architecture Framework
- SysML Architect: Support of the Systems Modeling
- UML Testing Profile: It has the support of the OMG’s standard test modeling language
- SoaML Designer: It has the support of SoaML, the SOA architecture modeling standard
Conclusion
There are many business process management (BPM) tools available today. It is sad to see that most of them are not open source. The transparency of their code base is what truly makes them stand out in the crowd. transparency means no cost to acquire their software, the ability to reach the developers themselves easily for help, and the ability to suggest new features.