We are happy to announce that we have just released Disco 2.14.

This update fixes a number of bugs and annoyances, and it further improves the general performance and stability of Disco. We have also given the old Airlift tubes a good clean, and we updated all your favorite bank holidays, so we recommend that you update at your earliest convenience.

As always, your friendly bug reports and fantastic ideas are what’s powering all those software updates – So, thank you kindly, keep ‘em coming, and thanks for using Disco!

How to update

Disco will automatically download and install this update the next time you run it, if you are connected to the internet.

If you prefer to install this update of Disco manually, you can download and run the updated installer packages from fluxicon.com/disco/download

Changes

• Filter: Fixed a rare issue when filtering for certain attributes.
• Import: Fixed an issue with importing very small datasets.
• Airlift: Ensure the integrity of downloaded data.
• Airlift: Properly remember last connection.
• TimeWarp: Updated bank holidays calendars.
• Licensing: Properly handle unrestricted data sets.
• Platform: Check installation integrity on startup.

In our latest Process Mining Café, we talked with Vincent Veraart (process improvement specialist), Lewis Ho (senior BI specialist), and Richard Verheijen (consultant advanced analytics). They work for UWV, the Dutch employee insurance agency.

The Dutch employee insurance agency is an important part of the social fabric of the government. In the Netherlands, you contact them if you need to request unemployment benefits or cannot work due to health issues, for example.

Six strategies to introduce process mining

Process mining helps UWV to become a data-driven organization, and to become more customer-oriented. When they initially introduced process mining, Vincent and his colleagues had a lot of explaining to do.

We discussed the six strategies they used to bring everyone along on their journey:

• Training courses
• Lunch updates
• Scrum
• Going horizontal
• ETL, and
• Creating change

The NOW measure

Then, we looked at one concrete project in more detail: The introduction of the temporary emergency bridging measure NOW.

Through NOW, employers can request relief financial support for paying the salaries of their employees during the Corona crisis. This was a completely new process that had not existed before. We discussed six success factors that helped them to establish this new process in a short amount of time.

I found it very interesting to hear how process mining is applied in a public administration. And I realized that their experiences are relevant for all organizations who want to introduce process mining.

Watch the recording here if you missed the live broadcast or if you want to re-watch the conversation.

Thanks again to Vincent, Lewis, Richard, and to all of you for joining us!

Links

Here are the links that we mentioned during the session:

• Spider activities

• How to analyze variants

• Exporting variants from Disco

Contact us via cafe@fluxicon.com if you have questions or suggestions anytime.

We will be back with a new Process Mining Café next week!

The Dutch Employee Insurance Agency (UWV) is an independent administrative authority commissioned by the Ministry of Social Affairs and Employment. If you work in the Netherlands, you would contact the UWV, for example, if you are looking for a job, need to request unemployment benefits, or cannot work due to health issues.

The internal processes at such a central public administration agency have to run as efficiently as possible to serve their citizens in the best possible way. This was put to the test when the Dutch government introduced a new law that allowed employers to seek financial support in paying the salaries of their employees during the Corona crisis.

Fortunately, UWV was already using process mining to streamline their internal processes and could leverage this capability with the introduction of this new law. Vincent Veraart, Richard Verheijen, and Lewis Ho, our guests in the upcoming Process Mining Café next week, will tell us all about how they are using process mining across various divisions at UWV. Tune in to discuss with us how to best apply process mining in public administration!

Join us on Wednesday 7 July, at 16:00 CEST! (Check your own timezone here).

As always, there is no registration required. Simply point your browser to fluxicon.com/cafe when it is time. You can watch the café and share your thoughts and questions while we are on the air, right there on the café website.

Tune in live for Process Mining Café by visiting fluxicon.com/cafe next week Wednesday 7 July, at 16:00 CEST! Add the time to your calendar to make sure you don’t miss it. Or sign up for the café mailing list here if you want to be reminded one hour before the session starts.

Process mining camp went by so fast! We had a great time with all of you last week, and we hope you enjoyed your stay on the campground as well.

There was one theme that kept popping up over and over again at this year’s camp: How can you make process mining fit into the various methodologies that organizations already use? For example, process improvement teams often work with the DMAIC approach from Lean Six Sigma, or the PDCA cycle. Auditors have their own procedures. As a part of your process mining journey, you need to understand how you can integrate process mining into these existing methodologies.

In our keynote we looked back at the talks from the past nine years of Process Mining Camp, and we saw that they fall into a broad range of industries and use cases. This reminds us that process mining can be applied really anywhere where processes are found. And once again this year, we had a varied program with practice talks from the financial services industry, government, production, and the telecommunications sector.

Our speakers did a really great job sharing their experiences. They showed us exactly what they did, and how process mining affects their own way of working. We also heard about the difficulties they encountered, and they were gracious to share their recommendations and other tips with the camp community.

A big thanks from all of us to Daan, Jasmine, Andreas, Minh Chau, Klaus, and Gary for their efforts!

There was also a new kid on the block at this year’s camp: In the Process Mining Lab, campers from 14 different timezones got to work. They were knee-deep in data (and spaghetti!), busy cooking up a hearty stew of knowledge over the campfire together. In the lab, we covered a lot of ground – while we were starting with some easy challenges, we moved on quickly to more advanced concepts.

In the exploration lab on Tuesday, we discovered that it took more than three business days to get clarity about the customer’s loan application. In Wednesday’s spaghetti lab we worked with a very complex process map. Almost all cases had a unique path through the process because each step represented a click on a website. In the data lab on Thursday, we combined datasets with different formats, transposed activity data from columns to rows, and unfolded loops of activity repetitions to be able to perform a more in-depth rework analysis.

Lots of campers joined our interactive sessions, discussing the solutions to the challenges. But also those who were not able to call in for the live sessions could still participate via the camp Slack and the lab session recordings.

At least as much fun as the talks and the lab were the daily Process Mining Café sessions. Our speakers of the day were joined by old friends from previous process mining camps to discuss process improvement methodologies, process mining in audit, in manufacturing, data challenges, and tips and tricks all around.

On the last camp day, Manuela Veloso joined Wil van der Aalst after his closing keynote, and we continued the discussion about robots, automation, and about what AI actually is.

We miss you, and the camaraderie around the campfire, already — but hold on, we don’t have to wait for another year until camp rolls around again! In our monthly Process Mining Café we will continue the discussion on all things process mining. Next up is our session on 7 July about process mining in public administration, make sure to join us then and there, won’t you?

For now, though: So long! We’ll meet again, back in the café or at the next camp!

To be kept in the loop about future editions of Process Mining Camp sign up at our camp mailing list here.

Welcome to the fifth and last day of Process Mining Camp! Here is the program for today:

• 16:00 CEST — Wil van der Aalst, RWTH Aachen (Germany)
• 16:45 CEST — Process Mining Café: Robot ethics
• 17:30 CEST — Campfire

Tune in live at processminingcamp.com and register for camp here to join the discussion in our camp community on Slack.

Sign up for our camp mailing list to receive the video recordings once they come out!