Process is a way of performing an operation in Aware IM. In the operation mode a process can be started from a rule, manually by a user, or when a service is requested by an external software system. Usually a configurator defines a process as a collection of rules that are executed in a particular order. A process can also be configured to use a software component developed using a traditional programming language. This option is useful when some special functionality, such as a complex mathematical algorithm, needs to be implemented, which cannot be done using the rule language.