IBM BPM, V8.0.1, All platforms > Authoring services in Integration Designer > Developing monitor models > What are monitor models?
What can be monitored
A monitoring-enabled application generates a series of events that are sent to Business Monitor in XML format. As long as the available events contain the needed data, a monitor model can be created to describe how to monitor the application.
Based on the monitor model, Business Monitor receives and extracts required information from the events, updates the metrics defined in the model, and represents the collected values in a number of ways on a dashboard, based on the business needs. The Monitor action services also automates what action to take in response to outbound events reporting on the occurrence of a business situation.
Often, information from several events must be correlated.
For example, to measure the delivery time for an order, you might need the time stamp of an order-submitted event and of a goods-received event. However, because there are many orders being processed and delivered, you need a correlation identifier to match a goods-received event with the corresponding order-submitted event. The correlation of events can be based on information provided by the system (such as a process ID) or by business information contained in the events (such as an order ID).
A business process can have multiple steps that can be monitored--such as placement of an order, order fulfillment, and delivery. The following image shows an example of such a business process with multiple steps.
Key performance indicators (KPIs) that could be monitored based on this process are:
- Average order handling time
- Average order entry to shipping time
- Percent of call center interventions
- Percent of unfulfilled orders
- Average shipping time
- Number of orders over 10000 USD
- Number of orders shipped to California
- Number of late payments (more than four days from shipping)
The system generates events that can be monitored, such as Order Placed and Bill Paid. The following image shows examples of such events.
Monitoring could begin when the Order Placed event is received, and end when one of several events is received: Fulfillment Failed, Order Returned, or Bill Paid. Data carried by these events, and by any intermediate events received between those two, would be used to calculate the metrics for each run of the system. These metrics in turn would be used to calculate the KPIs that are defined in the monitor model.