Weekly Questions: 2

Throughout digital systems, our class focused heavily in the beginning weeks on the use of Salesforce, through Max Labs Assignments. Salesforce is a cloud-based software company that provides customer relationship management software and applications. Our course uses Salesforce because we gained exposure to a platform that delivers cloud-based systems products. Salesforce is also very beneficial in enabling and enhancing businesses allowing them to communicate with their customers in a professional manner. Salesforce is also used across many different companies today so it is very beneficial for us students to gain experience in working with this platform. The benefits of creating a database in Salesforce is to keep records of important tasks such as leads, tasks, opportunities, accounts and notes. It’s also a way for the customer and the provider to keep in contact professionally. In Salesforce, there are also a variety of record types that allow linking different business processes to users, customers, and admins based on their user profiles. Aside from Salesforce, another important business process is a swim lane diagram, which is a flowchart that distinguishes a process and visibly differentiates job sharing and responsibilities for sub-processes of a business process. There are 5 symbols to a swim lane diagram which include: a circle (signifies the starting and ending of an event in the process, a rectangle (represents an activity in a process), a diamond (represents a decision that must be made in the process), an arrow (indicates the flow of the process), and lastly a cylinder (represents stored data). An actor is a user role or system within the system. For example, in an Italian restaurant swim lane diagram, the manager is an actor, the server is an actor, the computer is an actor, the chef, and the customers (etc.), are all actors. They contribute to the system and all have their own role within the diagram. Actors do not have specific names, just specific roles. For example, you would not call the manager by his real name, it would just be listed as manager. Swim lane diagrams are a form of process mapping. Process mapping is a technique used to visually map out workflows and processes. It is very beneficial for a company to use process mapping because it can help the company stay organized, but also make sure every role within the company is filled and every task has someone to complete it. Process mapping is very beneficial, similar to swim lane diagrams because they both allow corporations to stay organized, and have a visible flow of the system and how it is accomplished. The following swim lane included (I will include a photo of it in this post) has four mistakes in it. The most visible mistake I noticed right away is that the stock manager is labeled as John Smith. This is a mistake because the actor should not be an individuated name, just their role within the company. The next mistake I noticed is located in the first decision diamond, because it does not have a “No” option for the decision, only a yes. It is saying now that nothing happens if the order is not in stock. Another mistake I noticed is the starting and ending symbols on the diagram. They should be circles to signify the beginning and ending of the process, however they are both rectangles. The last mistake I noticed was the cylinder symbol- it should be a rectangle because delivering is an activity in the process, not stored data.