Data Requirements and Setup

Question 1

What is data transformation?

Answer 1

changing the format, structure or values of raw data from ERP-systems in order to upload a file to the process mining system

Question 2

What is the file uploaded to the process mining system called?

Answer 2

event log

Question 3

What does event log contain?

Answer 3

all recorded events with their timestamp assigned to certain case IDs

Question 4

Examples of how data transformation is typically achieved?

Answer 4

-Translation and mapping
-Filtering, aggregation, and summarization
-Enrichment and imputation
-Indexing and ordering
-Anonymization and encryption
-Modeling, typecasting, formatting, and renaming

Question 5

What happens to every step in a system?

Answer 5

they get recorded and leave behind a trace

Question 6

What happens to all changes and transactions referring to business objects/steps?

Answer 6

they’re stored in a database

Question 7

What does process intelligence do with the data objects/steps stored?

Answer 7

those details can be explored, extracted and transformed in a way that allows backtracking of all the steps

Question 8

The recreated steps are stored in what

Answer 8

the event log

Question 9

For analysis purpose, what format should the data be?

Answer 9

uniform and standardised, there can be differences especially if they come from different source systems

Question 10

Steps for data transformation

Answer 10

1. Definition of the target format
2. Conversion of the extracted data
3. Saving the converted data into a new file

Question 11

Why is data transformation necessary?

Answer 11

all data is stored in different tables and we need to ensure the extracted data is linked to specific cases

eg. system should know that Order ID 123 in the order table and Invoice ID 456 in the invoice table belong to the same case

Question 12

What does case ID define?

Answer 12

the scope of the process. It determines where the process starts and ends

eg. in the procurement process, case ID would be the puchase document ID and every single request is a new case

Question 13

What is the last part of ETL?

Answer 13

data load phase

Question 14

What does the data load phase cover?

Answer 14

This covers the tasks to upload the transformed data into the process mining system

Question 15

What 3 questions need to be addressed for your data load.

Answer 15

1. which upload method is required?
   could be manual eg. csv or automatic eg. API
2. should the existing data be replaced, or should new ones be attached?
   depends on scenario, appending new data to existing might be useful eg. annual data set created from extracting at the end of each quarter
3. how often should new data be uploaded
   depends on availability of data, could be hourly if live