Application Use Cases describe in business language the steps required to process and resolve work in an application.

They are documented for flows, subflows, and the individual processing steps associated with a work type in the Discovery Map of a project's Application Profile and the Application Accelerator.

• At the flow and subflow level, use cases are comprehensive and like the traditional UML use case where they describe all processes in the flow.
• At the individual processing level, use cases entered for steps in the flow are atomic (shown above). These are the smaller and more granular processes within the comprehensive use case. Because they are atomic, they can be reused to ensure consistency across other processes in an application and make it easier to update processing steps when you need to implement a change.

Atomic use cases:

• Specify one or more actors
• Specify a single event or method that triggers it; think of it as one process in a comprehensive use case
• Do not involve a change of ownership during the process
• Correspond to one particular step or series of steps within a screen flow or a single flow action in the processing of a work type
• Describe the processes to be performed including the steps involved in completing the use case, applicable edits, and the expected behaviors and outcomes
• Provide enough business detail so that a developer can implement it and a user can test it
• Take only a few minutes to enter

The difficulty with defining uses cases comes when you want to break down a comprehensive and complicated work flow into these atomic units. This example shows how a comprehensive use case is broken down to identify and describe six smaller atomic use cases for a single work type.

About Use Case rules

Use case rules are initially created by the Application Accelerator and are keyed to the application and a work type in the application. Once the rules are created and throughout a project's lifecycle, you can add, copy, version and reuse them when building or extending other applications and frameworks. This allows you to keep your project team up to date with ongoing changes.

A use case rule stores information in four tabs:

• Definition tab — describes the use case in enough detail to implement the use case, who performs the work, how it is triggered and an estimated level of effort
• Implementation tab — links the use case to the starting flow for the work type and the individual activity rules that are configured to implement the use case during the development cycle
• Requirements tab — links to requirements that affect the use case; these can be requirements entered for another application
• Attachments tab — stores supporting collateral and other documentation pertinent to the implementation of the use case

Definition Tab

Implementation Tab

The IN FLOW CONTEXT section lists the flows that apply to the use case.

The WITHOUT FLOW CONTEXT section lists activities that are used to implement the use case.

Click Edit Links to select and link the activities to the use case. Click Delete All Links to delete all links to the use case.

Details about completing the sections and fields of the rule are in the online help topic About Application Use Case rules.

Linking Use Cases to Rules

Use cases are linked to application and flow rules to create a comprehensive view of how they relate to the overall application and processing of work.

Application Rules

1. 1. Click the Use Cases tab to display a list of the use cases in the application.

Use cases rules added manually, by the Application Accelerator or the DCO Application Enablement Wizard appear on this list.

1. When the list displays:

• Click in a column heading to sort the list
• Click a row to display and update a use case

Flow Rules

Use cases are linked to flow rules on:

• the Use Cases tab
• the property panels of Connector, Utility, Integrator, Spin-off, Subflow and Starting Flow shapes

Use Case Tab

This tab categorizes use cases linked to the flow:

• ENTIRE FLOW - the use case implemented by this flow
• FLOW-WIDE LOCAL ACTIONS - use cases added to the Flow-wide local actions section located on the Design tab
• FLOW COMPONENTS - use cases that support the processing components of the flow. Each use case is referenced in the property panel of a flow shape in the diagram.

Property Panels

For this draft workflow generated from a Discovery Map by the Application Accelerator, the property panel was automatically linked to a use case if one was entered for the shape. A use case can be linked to more than one or more flows, subflows, and flow shapes in the application.

1. Select the name of the use case from the dropdown list in the property panel. It will list all use cases currently linked to the Application. This allows you to reuse use cases that were copied from another application.

2. Click Apply

Use Case Reports

You can select and run two reports that list use cases for your applications.

• Select > Application > Tools > Use Case Listto list use cases by application and work type.
  • Click Export to Excel to export the list to a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet.
• Select > Application > Tools > Use Case Matrix to list use cases by application and work type, flows that are linked to the use case and shapes in the flows that reference the use case.
  • Click a row to display a use case rule.
  • Click Export to Excel to export the list to Microsoft Excel.
  • Click Add to Favorites to add it to a report category on your favorites list.

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This article links to the following articles describing features and functions of the DCO 6.1 release.

What's New

Upgrading from Older Versions of DCO

Creating an Application Profile

Creating Discovery Maps

Sharing and Merging Application Profiles

Using the Application Accelerator

Using the DCO Application Enablement Wizard

Using the Application Document Wizard

Extending the Document Wizard and Document Templates

Working with Application Requirements

Return to About the Direct Capture of Objectives