The BPM tool comes with a set of public libraries, enabling you to leverage them as a reference, or you can create a new one from scratch. Often, advisors/partners would come up with their existing business process libraries as a starting point and modify them according to your industry and organization needs.

By using the BPM, you can achieve the following goals:

• Standardize the process flows and business requirements maintained as a library
• Ability to align the Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations, Enterprise edition processes with industry standard processes, as described by the American Productivity and Quality Center (APQC)
• Prepare a hierarchy of business processes and their associated requirements, all under one repository

You can view the three types of libraries in BPM, as follows:

• Global libraries: These are available from Microsoft, and can be used as a starting point to build your own
• Corporate libraries: These are libraries owned by your organization for any organization user to leverage
• Project libraries: These are available to users within the LCS project with appropriate access

Following visual shows the various libraries accessible in your LCS project:

Following visual is of a global library from Microsoft, leveraging an APQC cross-industry business model:

The preceding library is divided into three sections, as follows:

• Core view: Here you can edit, review, and combine your hierarchy with the configuration and data manager tool.
• Process hierarchy: Here you can view/build your business process and requirements hierarchy.
• Process details: Here you maintain more information for a specific reference/line in the hierarchy and include details such as countries applicable, industry applicable, and so on. Identify the fit and gaps between user requirements and the default functionality that Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations, Enterprise edition provides.

You can create a new BPM library in the following ways:

• Copy the existing libraries and modify them: You can copy libraries provided by Microsoft or your organization and modify them to suit your project-specific processes.
• Create a new library from scratch: You can create a new library from scratch by either adding steps one by one or importing as an Excel file. You can also import and add steps from the existing libraries accessible in your LCS project.
• Import from Excel: Use the Import from Excel button, which opens a dialog, as shown in the following image. Download template, prepare your library in Excel, and then import it back to create your BPM library:

Let's now create a new library from scratch and learn the steps involved in it. Click on the Create library button. A new dialog box will open, where you can enter your library name and click OK to create the library. Once the library is created, you can open the library. A new library will have two default processes created. You can rename those processes and then add additional processes as children or siblings, as shown in the following image: 

There is also an option to import from other available BPM libraries, which can be the fastest way to build your library. The following image shows an example of importing the 'Deliver Products and Services' process and its sub-process from the APQC library:

We recommend you build your processes and subprocesses in BPM and then add requirements within that structure. This ensures completeness of business processes as per the project objectives. Adding requirements within subprocesses could be done, either in BPM or it could also be done via VSTS.  To add requirements, navigate to the subprocess node in the BPM hierarchy, and on the right-hand side, go to the Requirements tab as shown in the following screenshot:

As shown in the preceding screenshot, there is an Add requirement button, which can be used to create requirements at this node.

While adding a requirement, you can specify a title, detailed description, and the initial assessment, whether it is a fit or a gap type and if unsure at the time of creating the requirement, just leave it as Not assessed, which is the default value.

The following is a visual of the requirement popup screen depicting the fields:

In addition to creating and importing the process, you can delete a process, create linked processes, rearrange them by moving up or down, and move them as a sibling or child.

You can also add additional information to process nodes. The following tables highlights additional information that you can add to the process node:

Following screenshot is an activity diagram for a business process; this diagram can be edited and updated with elements from the left, and saved and published:

You can create process-specific flowcharts or import a Visio diagram after clicking on the Diagrams button, as highlighted in the preceding screenshot.

To see the action pane in the diagram, you need to right click on the canvas to see the toolbar at the bottom with the options of Edit, Save, Export, and Gap list as shown here:

Once your business processes are complete, you can export a business process node as a Microsoft Word document and use it as a training manual in the later phases of the project.

Clearly, the BPM tool helps you easily define and manage your business processes and requirements during the analysis phase of the project. Integration with VSTS and in-product help take it to the next level, where you can utilize these business process in the later phases of the project.  

Managing the business hierarchy in LCS has one more advantage: its out of box synchronization with VSTS. Here, you can synchronize the LCS BPM library hierarchy with your VSTS project as a one-time push, and from there on, maintain all project delivery-related information in VSTS.

With your BPM library defined, let's now configure your VSTS account with the LCS project in the next section.