Overview
The Activity Not Performed filter selects cases where a specified activity was never executed. This case-level filter examines each case's complete activity sequence and returns only those cases that do not contain any events with the specified activity name. The filter is particularly useful for identifying process deviations, missing mandatory steps, or cases that followed alternative paths through the process.
Common Uses
- Quality Control: Find cases that skipped review or approval activities to identify quality issues.
- Compliance Checking: Identify cases missing mandatory regulatory or compliance activities.
- Exception Analysis: Discover cases that never went through error handling or escalation activities.
- Process Completeness: Detect cases missing critical process steps like payment verification or delivery confirmation.
- Variant Analysis: Understand which cases followed alternative process paths by identifying missing standard activities.
- Bottleneck Investigation: Find cases that bypassed certain activities, potentially indicating workarounds or shortcuts.
Settings
Activity Value: Select the activity name you want to check for absence. In the dropdown menu, you will see available activity names along with the percentage and number of cases they appeared in. The filter will return all cases where the selected activity was never performed.
Note: The activity name comparison is case-sensitive and requires an exact match. If you misspell an activity name, the filter's validation system will suggest the closest matching activity.
Examples
Example 1: Finding Cases Without Payment
Scenario: You want to identify all purchase orders where the invoice was never paid, which could indicate outstanding receivables or payment issues.
Settings:
- Activity Value: "Pay Invoice"
Result: The filter removes all cases that contain the "Pay Invoice" activity, leaving only cases where payment never occurred.
Insights: This helps identify unpaid invoices that may require follow-up, collection efforts, or investigation into why payment was skipped.
Example 2: Identifying Cases Without Approval
Scenario: You need to find all cases that proceeded without going through the approval process, which could indicate compliance violations or process gaps.
Settings:
- Activity Value: "Approve Request"
Result: The filter returns only cases that never had an "Approve Request" activity.
Insights: These cases may represent:
- Auto-approved low-value transactions
- Process violations where approval was skipped
- System errors that bypassed approval workflows
- Emergency expedited processing
Example 3: Detecting Missing Quality Checks
Scenario: You want to find manufacturing cases that skipped the quality inspection step.
Settings:
- Activity Value: "Quality Inspection"
Result: The filter selects cases without any "Quality Inspection" events.
Insights: This can reveal:
- Products that may have quality issues
- Process shortcuts that could lead to defects
- Cases that need retrospective quality review
- Patterns in when inspections are skipped
Example 4: Finding Incomplete Order Processing
Scenario: Identify orders where the delivery activity was never performed, indicating potential fulfillment issues.
Settings:
- Activity Value: "Deliver Order"
Result: The filter returns cases where "Deliver Order" never occurred.
Insights: These cases might indicate:
- Cancelled orders
- Orders stuck in processing
- Fulfillment failures requiring investigation
- Backorders or out-of-stock situations
Output
The filter returns a new dataset containing only the cases where the specified activity was not performed. Each returned case preserves all its original events and attributes, but the specified activity will not appear in any of those cases.
If no cases match the criteria (meaning all cases contain the specified activity), the filter returns an empty result set.
Technical Notes
- Filter Type: Case-level filter (removes entire cases, not individual events)
- Performance: Efficiently implemented with early termination logic
- Activity Matching: Uses exact, case-sensitive string matching
- Null Handling: Can find cases without null activities if ActivityValue is set to null
- Validation: Automatically suggests similar activity names if the specified activity is not found
This documentation is part of the mindzieStudio process mining platform.