# Spreadsheets as Interoperability Solution for Business Process Representation
## 4 Approach Overview  
Our approach consists in generating business process models from spreadsheet-based representation. It is based on our preliminary workshop proposal presenting the method principles [13]. The context of the approach is presented in Figure 2. Our method consists of the following steps:  
1. Task acquisition--set of tasks can be represented in the form of a task list or acquired from the natural language description.
2. Creating a spreadsheet with a task list--storing the tasks in the required spreadsheet-based representation: 1. manual spreadsheet extraction from structured task specification, 2. automated spreadsheet extraction from process description in natural language [14].
3. Transformation into a BPMN process model: 1. for an ordered list of tasks--using rules for mapping spreadsheet representation into a process model,  
\begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c c c c c} \hline \hline
**Ingredient** & **BPMN** & **Petri Nets** & **EPC** & **UML AD** & **YAWL** & **Spreadsheet** \\ \hline _Activities_ & Activities & Transitions & Functions & Activities & Tasks & Activity \\ \hline _Events_ & Events & N/A & Events & Send/Receive & N/A & Activity \\  & & & & Signals & & \\ \hline _Decision_ & OR/XOR & Alternative & Connectors & Decision & OR/XOR & Condition \\ _Points_ & Gateways & Paths & & Nodes & Tasks & \\ \hline _Actors_ & Swimlanes & N/A & Organization & Partitions & N/A & Who \\  & & N/A & Units & & & \\ \hline _Objects_ & Artifacts & N/A & Information & Object & N/A & Input/Output \\  & & & Resources & Nodes & & \\ \hline _Outcomes_ & End Events & Final Marking & Final Events & End Nodes & Output & Activity \\  & & & & & Condition & Activity \\ \hline _Customer_ & Pool & N/A & N/A & Partitions & N/A & N/A \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table}
Table 2: Business process ingredients represented by different modeling notations.  
As a result, a process model is generated. The original contribution of this paper is the specification of creating the spreadsheet with ordered list and its transformation into a process model (i.e., steps 2 and 3a, highlighted in red in Figure 2).  
In our solution, a business process can be described using one of the spreadsheet applications like MS Excel, Google Docs or OpenOffice Calc. Such a spreadsheet can be created either manually or merged from the task list specifications provided by users. It also can be generated from semi-formal or informal documents. Such solution was presented in [14], where this spreadsheet-based representation was used as an intermediate model when generating business process models.  
Based on a CSV (Comma-Separated Values) file, which is a common representation of spreadsheet, of the model exported from the application, a graphical process model in BPMN can be generated according to the specified transformation rules. This requires an ordered list of tasks, which syntax is described in this paper. However, in the case of unordered list, it is also possible to solve the  
Figure 2: Overview of the spreadsheet-based approach and its place in the context of process modeling.  
problem using constraint programming and some process construction or discovery methods [33; 34]. Our spreadsheet-based process representation supports all basic BPMN elements. The subset of supported BPMN elements covers the most commonly used elements of BPMN diagram [15].  
Although there are approaches providing the spreadsheet based representation for a process model [26; 27], the method presented in this paper takes advantage of a nested list form and does not require explicit specification of gateways in the spreadsheet. Thus, a business user who defines tasks does not have to be skilled in process modeling in any business process notation.