Create Update Activity

Overview

The Create Update Activity enrichment automatically generates new activities in your process when specific event attribute values change within a case. This powerful feature makes attribute changes visible in your process flow, transforming hidden state transitions into explicit process steps that can be analyzed, visualized, and optimized. Rather than requiring manual event logging for every status change, this enrichment intelligently detects value changes and creates activities to represent them.

This enrichment is particularly valuable for processes where critical information changes over time but these changes aren't explicitly recorded as activities. For example, when a sales order status changes from "Pending" to "Approved" to "Shipped", you can automatically create update activities at each transition point. This makes the process flow clearer in process maps, enables accurate timing analysis of state transitions, and helps identify bottlenecks or anomalies in approval workflows. The enrichment monitors specified activities for changes in selected attributes and inserts new activities only when meaningful changes occur, avoiding clutter from redundant updates.

By making attribute changes visible as activities, you can analyze patterns that would otherwise be hidden in attribute values. This includes measuring how long items remain in specific states, identifying which transitions take the longest, tracking who performs status updates, and understanding the sequence of state changes across different process variants. The enrichment bridges the gap between event attributes and process activities, providing a complete view of both what happened and how data evolved throughout the process.

Common Uses

• Create "Status Updated" activities when order status changes from "Pending" to "Processing" to "Complete"
• Generate "Priority Changed" activities when ticket priority is escalated or de-escalated
• Track "Owner Reassigned" activities when the responsible person changes during case handling
• Monitor "Risk Level Changed" activities when credit risk assessments are updated
• Capture "Location Updated" activities when shipments move between warehouses or distribution centers
• Record "Approval Stage Advanced" activities when approval levels change in multi-tier approval processes
• Track "Price Adjusted" activities when product pricing changes during quote negotiations
• Generate "Category Reclassified" activities when support tickets are moved between departments

Settings

New Activity Name: The name for the activity that will be created when the attribute value changes. Choose a descriptive name that clearly indicates what type of change occurred, such as "Status Updated", "Priority Changed", or "Owner Reassigned". This activity name will appear in process maps and activity lists.

Event Attribute: Select the event attribute to monitor for changes. The enrichment will track this attribute across the selected activities and create new activities whenever the value changes. This can be any event attribute such as status fields, owner names, priority levels, category codes, or location identifiers.

Update Activity: The specific activity to use as a reference point for detecting changes. While the enrichment monitors multiple activities (specified in Change Activities), this setting identifies which activity type should be considered the "update" activity. In most configurations, this should match one of the activities in the Change Activities list.

Change Activities: Select one or more activities where the attribute should be monitored for changes. The enrichment will only examine events with these activity names when detecting value changes. For example, if you select "Create Order", "Modify Order", and "Approve Order", the enrichment will check if the monitored attribute changed between any of these activities.

Ignore Case: When enabled, the enrichment treats null (blank) values as meaningful values when detecting changes. When disabled, null values are ignored, and changes involving null values won't trigger new activities. Enable this when null values represent a meaningful state (like "Unassigned" or "Not Set"), or disable it to focus only on changes between actual values.

Examples

Example 1: Order Status Tracking

Scenario: An e-commerce fulfillment process has multiple activities that can change the order status (Create Order, Payment Received, Ship Order), but status transitions aren't recorded as explicit activities. You want to create "Status Changed" activities to visualize the status progression in process maps.

Settings:

• New Activity Name: Status Changed
• Event Attribute: OrderStatus
• Update Activity: Create Order
• Change Activities: Create Order, Payment Received, Ship Order
• Ignore Case: False

Output: Creates "Status Changed" activities whenever the OrderStatus attribute changes between the specified activities. For example:

• Case starts with "Create Order" (OrderStatus = "Pending")
• "Payment Received" occurs (OrderStatus = "Paid") - Creates "Status Changed" activity
• "Ship Order" occurs (OrderStatus = "Shipped") - Creates "Status Changed" activity

The new "Status Changed" activities appear in the process map, showing the exact timing of status transitions and making it easy to measure how long orders remain in each status.

Insights: Reveals the actual sequence of status changes, identifies delays between status transitions, helps measure SLA compliance for each status stage, and enables filtering by specific status progression patterns.

Example 2: Support Ticket Priority Escalation

Scenario: A customer support process allows tickets to be escalated or de-escalated, changing the Priority attribute across various activities. You want to track every priority change to understand escalation patterns and response times.

Settings:

• New Activity Name: Priority Changed
• Event Attribute: TicketPriority
• Update Activity: Create Ticket
• Change Activities: Create Ticket, Assign Agent, Escalate, Update Ticket, Resolve Ticket
• Ignore Case: True

Output: Creates "Priority Changed" activities whenever priority is modified. For a ticket that starts as "Low", gets escalated to "Medium", then to "High", and finally resolved, the enrichment creates:

• "Priority Changed" when escalated from Low to Medium
• "Priority Changed" when escalated from Medium to High

Each new activity includes all event attributes from the original event, including the new priority value and the timestamp of the change.

Insights: Identifies how often tickets require escalation, measures time between escalations, reveals which customers or issue types frequently require priority changes, and helps optimize initial priority assignment.

Example 3: Shipment Location Tracking

Scenario: A logistics process records shipment movements across warehouses, but location changes aren't explicitly tracked as activities. The ShipmentLocation attribute changes as items move, and you want to visualize these movements in the process flow.

Settings:

• New Activity Name: Location Updated
• Event Attribute: ShipmentLocation
• Update Activity: Receive Shipment
• Change Activities: Receive Shipment, Transfer Item, Load for Delivery, Deliver
• Ignore Case: False

Output: Creates "Location Updated" activities at each location change:

• Item arrives at "Warehouse A" (Receive Shipment) - Initial location set
• Transfer to "Warehouse B" (Transfer Item) - Creates "Location Updated"
• Load at "Warehouse B" (Load for Delivery) - No change, no activity created
• Delivery from "Customer Site" (Deliver) - Creates "Location Updated"

The process map now shows the shipment journey with explicit location change activities, making it easy to see the distribution network flow.

Insights: Visualizes shipment routes, identifies transfer bottlenecks, measures time spent at each location, and reveals inefficient routing patterns.

Example 4: Approval Workflow Stage Tracking

Scenario: A procurement approval process has an ApprovalStage attribute that changes from "Pending" to "Manager Approved" to "Director Approved" to "Final Approved". You want to create activities for each approval stage transition.

Settings:

• New Activity Name: Approval Stage Advanced
• Event Attribute: ApprovalStage
• Update Activity: Submit for Approval
• Change Activities: Submit for Approval, Manager Review, Director Review, Final Approval
• Ignore Case: False

Output: Creates "Approval Stage Advanced" activities at each stage transition:

Original Activity	ApprovalStage Before	ApprovalStage After	New Activity Created
Submit for Approval	null	Pending	No (initial value)
Manager Review	Pending	Manager Approved	Yes
Director Review	Manager Approved	Director Approved	Yes
Final Approval	Director Approved	Final Approved	Yes

Insights: Clearly shows approval progression, measures time between approval stages, identifies where approvals stall, and enables analysis of multi-tier approval efficiency.

Example 5: Case Owner Changes in Incident Management

Scenario: An IT incident management process reassigns cases between support staff as workload shifts or escalations occur. The AssignedTo attribute changes, but these reassignments aren't tracked as explicit activities. You want to understand reassignment patterns.

Settings:

• New Activity Name: Case Reassigned
• Event Attribute: AssignedTo
• Update Activity: Create Incident
• Change Activities: Create Incident, Assign, Reassign, Escalate, Resolve
• Ignore Case: True

Output: Creates "Case Reassigned" activities whenever the AssignedTo attribute changes:

• Create Incident (AssignedTo = "Auto-Assignment Queue") - Initial assignment
• Assign (AssignedTo = "John Smith") - Creates "Case Reassigned"
• Reassign (AssignedTo = "Sarah Jones") - Creates "Case Reassigned"
• Escalate (AssignedTo = "Senior Team") - Creates "Case Reassigned"

The enrichment tracks all ownership changes, making it visible who handled the case and when handoffs occurred.

Insights: Reveals how often cases are reassigned, identifies overloaded agents requiring frequent reassignments, measures handoff delays, and helps optimize initial assignment strategies.

Output

The Create Update Activity enrichment generates new event rows in the event log, creating activities that represent attribute value changes. These new activities integrate seamlessly into the existing process flow and appear in all process analysis tools.

Activity Properties:

• Activity Name: Matches the "New Activity Name" setting
• Timestamp: Inherited from the event where the attribute change occurred
• Case ID: Same as the original event (activities are added to the same case)
• Event Attributes: All event attributes from the original event are copied to the new activity
• Activity Type: Standard activity that appears in process maps and activity lists

Creation Logic:

• New activities are created only when the monitored attribute value changes
• The first occurrence of an activity sets the initial value (no update activity created)
• Subsequent occurrences are compared to the previous value
• If the value differs, a new activity is inserted with the same timestamp
• If "Ignore Case" is disabled, changes involving null values are ignored
• Only events matching the selected "Change Activities" are monitored

Integration Points:

• New activities appear in process maps showing the flow of attribute changes
• Available in activity filters for selecting cases with specific change patterns
• Can be used in subsequent enrichments like duration calculations
• Visible in variant analysis to identify different change sequences
• Included in activity frequency statistics and performance metrics
• Appear in event log exports with all original event attributes

Process Map Visualization: The new activities create additional nodes in process maps, showing the paths of attribute changes. This makes previously hidden state transitions visible and analyzable alongside regular process activities.

Performance Considerations:

• The enrichment processes all events in selected activities to detect changes
• For large datasets, consider limiting Change Activities to only those where changes are expected
• New activities increase the event count, which may affect process map complexity
• Use filters to focus analysis on specific types of changes if needed

See Also

• Remove Activities: Remove unwanted activities from the process log
• Remove Repeated Activities: Consolidate consecutive identical activities
• Representative Case Attribute: Extract attribute values from specific activities to case level
• Duration Between Two Activities: Measure time between original and update activities

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This documentation is part of the mindzie Studio process mining platform.