The context in which events occurs should be taken into account when analyzing processes. Contextualized event and case data can be used to extend the understanding of the processes and improve the quality of the analysis.

 

We differentiate two kinds of information:

•Case Context Information: Information that is related to the CaseID. It is unique and doesn’t change throughout a process instance.

•Event Context Information: Information that is related to an Event. It is possible that it will change within a case.

 

 

 

To explain this more in detail, let's take a look at a production process in a simplified production company that produces in one plant jackets and in the other plant buttons:

 

 

Some of the context information that can be found in the process are for example: Production Order Nr., Company Code, Product Class, Plant, Product, User Name and Machine. The easiest way to identify what information is event or case context information is to put the additional information in the event log table, as in the following example:

 

 

Case context information:

It can be identified that for example for the production order 4601 the information that don’t change throughout a process instance are the Company Code, Product Class, Plant and Product. For the production order 4602 it's the same.

 

Event context information:

It can also be identified that there are information that change within a case. Each activity is done by a different machine, but for example, the user doesn’t change in the order 4602. That could happen only in that order, so you need to know your data before you assign which information is related to the case or event. As we are observing the process from the production company view and not from the plant view, the user is also an event context information in this data set.