UCAS Business Process Model
                         
Jessica Chen-Burger, Austin Tate               
AIAI, The University of Edinburgh, UK

Sources: http://www.ucas.com; real email communication between 
students and UCAS, and Discovery document produced by Edify. 

This business process model includes high level UCAS business processes. 
Two different aspects are included: the higher level and overall processes for 
dealing with student applications applying for a position in the Universities 
and Colleges in the UK, and the error-handling processes when receive 
student enquiries. 

Based on the different nature of the above processes, two roles have been 
identified in the UCAS business process model. This information provides
a foundation for implementing two different but collaborating types of users
in the business process model. The two identified roles are Call Center 
Supervisor (CCS) and Customer Service Representative (CSR). An 
implementation of the process model are two communicating "To Do List" 
process panels which is a direct mapping of the process model. This is 
one example implementation of the process model, it is possible to 
produce different types of implementation. 

The main source used for building the top level process model is UCAS's web 
site as given above. The lower level error-handling processes are based 
on the derived process logic from analysis and extraction of real student email
enquiries and UCAS' replies to those enquiries. Content of Discovery 
document produced by Edify is also taken into account. 

The "Introduction to Notations" diagram briefly describes the notations 
used in the model. Among which, the activity node is the main component 
of the model which denotes an activity or a process that are carried by 
UCAS. Upon enactment, an activity is instantiated with the actual instances 
of actions which handle student applications. The activity node, therefore, 
represents the same process that has been used to handle all student 
applications in the specified area. An activity may be decomposed into 
sub-activities. Such activities are highlighted by thicker rectangles.