Title: Problem
of Tracing Workflow Instances in ERP-Systems
Abstract: While
the interaction of the users with modern business application systems , e.g.
SAP R/3, users leave traces in the form of log-, protocol- and trace data.
These data can be pulled up and used as a main data source for a user behavior
analysis. The main point of a user behavior analysis is to discover and analyze
interesting patterns from these data. Application Usage Mining (AUM) uses
the Mining Methods to discover and evaluate these patterns. The results of
the user behavior analysis should support and simplify the personalization
of the system from the users point of view as well as [1,2] enable the development
of an As-Is Model as a basis to improve the Workflows of the Business Process
of an enterprise [3]. The user trace file of an ERP system contains data,
which describe the information about the accomplished transactions and/or
transaction steps. These data provide information about the tasks processed
by the user. As an ERP system like SAP/R3 possesses an implicit Workflow
model in contrary to WFMS, the user trace file of the SAP/R3 logs no allocation
of users interactions to the processed Workflow instances. Thus important
information about the Workflow instances is missing, which are necessary
for modelling a Workflow model. These information must be ex-tracted therefore
first from the trace file. In this paper the Workflow instance problem is
treated and algorithms are developed to solve this problem.