Purpose Changes in workflow relevant data of business processes at run-time can hinder their completion or impact their profitability as they have been instantiated under different circumstances. The purpose of this paper is to propose a context engine to enhance a business process management (BPM) system’s context-awareness. The generic architecture provides the flexibility to configure processes during initialization as well as to adapt running instances at decision gates or during execution due to significant context change. Design/methodology/approach The paper discusses context-awareness as the conceptual background. The technological capabilities of business rules and complex event processing (CEP) are outlined in an architecture design. A reference process is proposed and discussed in an exemplary application. Findings The results provide an improvement over the current situation of static variable instantiation of business processes with local information. The proposed architecture extends the well-known combination of business rules and BPM systems with a context engine based on CEP. Research limitations/implications The resulting architecture for a BPM system using a context engine is generic in nature and, hence, requires to be contextualized for situated implementations. Implementation success is dependent on the availability of context information and process compensation options. Practical implications Practitioners receive advice on a reference architecture and technology choices for implementing systems, which can provide and monitor context information for business processes as well as intervene and adapt the execution. Originality/value Currently, there is no multi-purpose non-proprietary context engine based on CEP or any other technology available for BPM, which facilitates the adaptation of processes at run-time due to changes in context variables. This paper will stimulate a debate between research and practice on suitable design and technology.

中文翻译：

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使用上下文引擎增强业务流程执行

目的在运行时更改与业务流程相关的工作流程相关数据可能会阻碍其完成或影响其盈利能力，因为它们已在不同情况下实例化。本文的目的是提出一种上下文引擎，以增强业务流程管理（BPM）系统的上下文意识。通用架构提供了灵活性，可以在初始化期间配置流程，以及由于重大上下文更改而在决策门或执行期间适应正在运行的实例。设计/方法/方法本文讨论了上下文感知作为概念背景。在体系结构设计中概述了业务规则和复杂事件处理（CEP）的技术能力。在示例性应用中提出并讨论了参考过程。结果结果提供了对使用本地信息进行业务流程的静态变量实例化的当前状况的改进。所提出的体系结构使用基于CEP的上下文引擎扩展了业务规则和BPM系统的众所周知的组合。研究的局限性/含义使用上下文引擎的BPM系统的最终体系结构本质上是通用的，因此，对于所处的实现，需要对其进行上下文化。实现成功取决于上下文信息和过程补偿选项的可用性。实际含义从业人员会收到有关实施系统的参考体系结构和技术选择的建议，这些建议可以提供和监视业务流程的上下文信息，以及干预和调整执行。独创性/价值当前，没有基于CEP或BPM可用的任何其他技术的多用途非专有上下文引擎，由于上下文变量的更改，该引擎有助于在运行时适应流程。本文将激发有关合适的设计和技术的研究与实践之间的争论。