Viva Energy Australia (VEA) has a complex process to manage existing and onboard new franchisees/owners into VEA’s ecosystem as they embark on the setup of each retail service station site. Leonardo helped build a process automation platform and solution using Red Hat® Process Automation Manager on Red Hat OpenShift®.

We implemented several independent components to manage document handling, email generation and notifications to better create visibility and documentation of the data support this retail onboarding. 

• Viva Energy Australia (VEA)  supplies high-quality Shell fuels and lubricants at over
  1,250 locations across Australia.  
• VEA has a complex process to manage existing and onboard new franchisees/owners into VEA’s ecosystem as they embark on the setup of each retail service station site.
• Leonardo helped build a process automation platform and solution using Red Hat Process Automation Manager on Red Hat OpenShift.

VEA has a complex process to manage existing and onboard new franchisees/owners into VEA’s ecosystem as they embark on the setup of each retail service station site. Their current automation platform was not fit for purpose for future business requirements. Existing support levels had reduced on the existing platform and there were limitations of the current process automation solution and platform in terms of leveraging enterprise services and RESTful architecture. There was a lack of visibility and documentation of the existing solution, namely the underlying management of data objects and how they relate to the overall VEA canonical data structures.

VEA desired to move to a more modern architecture and platform for their future digital endeavours alongside harmonizing its enterprise middleware with Red Hat. 

To accelerate this initiative, Viva migrated its existing Retail Site Setup process from the standalone Activiti based process automation platform to a cloud-based Red Hat Process Automation Manager and Entando Digital Experience Platform.

 In discussions with Leonardo, a solution was selected utilising OpenShift and Red Hat Process Automation Manager deployed onto VEA’s Microsoft Azure cloud infrastructure.  Some key requirements of the architecture were enabling workflow integration from portal applications, cloud-native, role-based security, modern form creation and an emphasis on DevOps.

Leonardo delivered the following solutions:

Entando

• Entando DXP provides the user interface for the business process. Entando was be used to replace the built-in Activiti’s user forms.

Red Hat Process Automation Manager 

• Red Hat Process Automation Manager provides the business process orchestration. Red Hat Process Automation Manager was used to replace the Activiti process model and execution

Spring Boot Microservices

• Several independently deployable microservices were built using spring-boot.  These services performed tasks to assist in document/data handling and connection to VEA’s Enterprise API Gateway.

Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform

• Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform was deployed to VEA’s enterprise cloud infrastructure. The implemented solution components were deployed to this platform

Jenkins

Jenkins is the most popular and common CI/CD orchestration platform. Jenkins was used in place of Viva’s existing GoCD. In order to achieve this new platform, Leonardo performed the following phases of work and implemented resulting deliverables utilising an Agile delivery approach:

Implemented VEA’s OpenShift Container Platform Cluster 

• This activity implemented the production OpenShift Container Platform operating on the cloud-based IaaS of Viva’s choice.

DevOps enablement

• This activity implemented Jenkin-based CI/CD pipelines to automate the build and deploy process to SIT, UAT, and PRD environments.

Development

• This activity migrated the solution from Activiti to Red Hat Process Automation Manager.  This activity also included de-sensitising the source code to remove VEA's specific comments and business information for open source contribution. All source code was checked into Viva’s private repository including:

• • Entando Widgets and Plugins
  • Red Hat Process Automation Manager process model definitions
  • Spring Boot microservices
  • Process logic Java classes
  • OCP templates
  • Platform operation assets

SIT Test

• During this phase Leonardo performed System Integrated Testing on the end-to-end solution.
  

UAT Test

• Leonardo provided support while VEA conducted their User Acceptance Test. All documentation deliverables handed over on VEA’s Confluence included:
• • Platform Architecture
  • CI/CD operation

Production Implementation

• This activity performed the go-live implementation and cut-over from the incumbent Activiti platform.

 

The implemented solution enhanced the previous application by creating a structured data model that relates to the VEA canonical data model. This adds visibility to the status of each process and enables faster change in the future as well as leveraging a common data vocabulary.

We have completely overhauled and customizing task notifications and escalations to meet VEA’s standard operating procedures. This overcame an existing Activiti limitation that required significant workaround.

The deployed solution implemented several independent components to manage document handling, email generation and notifications. These are not specific to retail-sites and can be used across the organization for additional applications.

The deployment of the application onto OpenShift Container Platform has enabled rapid deployment into multiple environments, ensuring agile deployment and enabling continuous updates. The implemented solution also provides the ability to seamlessly migrate legacy processes into newly released versions.