Enable the business process for portal

 

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This topic describes tasks that perform in WebSphere Integration Developer to integrate the business process with the portal environment..

A business process is a set of activities (tasks) that can be performed repeatedly to achieve business objectives. The process model is a template from which each process is instantiated. The human tasks that are defined in the process model are called staff activities.

WebSphere Process Server is the runtime for processes that are modeled using the Business Process Execution Language for Web Services (BPEL4WS or BPEL), which is a Web services standard for business process composition. Use the process editor provided by WebSphere Integration Developer to create business processes for WebSphere Portal. See the documentation included with the process development tools for more information of how to build processes.

WebSphere Portal supports only BPEL-based business processes.

 

Set the Client UI identifier

For WebSphere Portal processes, the process designer must define the Client UI identifier for each activity using the process development tools. This identifier represents an open resource reference which is used at runtime to lookup task page definitions. For a given task, we can select the unique name of the page and the type (static page or dynamic page). To set the Client UI identifier for process activities, follow these steps in WebSphere Integration Developer.

  1. Open the Business Integration Perspective.

  2. Expand the Service Project node within the tree hierarchy displayed (ensure the Service tab is chosen).

  3. Expand the project that contains the business process.

  4. Expand the Business Logic node.

  5. Expand the Processes node.

  6. Double click on the process you wish to work with. The BPEL Editor opens and displays the process model.

  7. Select the staff activity for which you want to define the client UI identifier by clicking on it.

  8. Within the properties window displayed under the process model, click the Details tab.

  9. You will see a message stating that the underlying staff action is implemented by a Human Task. Click on the Open button to open the properties associated with the corresponding Human Task.

  10. Select Portal Client from the Client Settings list.

  11. The properties window will now allow us to specify a unique name and a page type. Enter the unique name in the Unique name field. Use the default value Page Definition in the Type field

  12. Save the changes.

  13. Export the generated EAR file and deploy it.

 

Security settings

When testing the components of a business process application, J2EE security must be enabled on the test portal server to correctly display the user's personal tasks.

For the input (receive) node and all other staff activities, specify the staff for the different roles available, choosing an appropriate verb and defining a corresponding name/value pair. For example, for a staff activity approveRequest, the Potential Owner role could be defined using the verb Users. Users are specified with their full distinguished name (DN).

 

Export artifacts required by the task processing portlet

During development of the business process, the WSDL and XSD files describing the single tasks must be made available to the task processing portlet developer to include in the portlet application. WebSphere Integration Developer generates WSDL files for the interfaces of tasks and XSD files for all messages defined in the process. These files are required by the task processing portlet and should be placed as part of a JAR in the /WEB-INF/lib of the corresponding portlet application. To export a JAR file containing these classes, the following steps must be performed:

  1. Right-click the files to be exported. A context menu is displayed.

  2. Select Export > Jar file from the context menu.

  3. Enter the destination location for the JAR file.

  4. Click Finish.

 

Use the Member Manager staff plug-in provider

When modeling a business process, a staff plug-in provider configuration has to be selected which is used during the execution of the process. For this, the JNDI name of the plug-in configuration, bpe/staff/wpswmmconfiguration, is used. Set the staff plug-in for every single task. Use the following steps to set the staff plug-in for the task:

  1. Click on the staff activity you want to define as the client user interface identifier.

  2. Click the Details tab on the Process model properties window.

    A message displays stating that a Human Task implements the underlying staff action.

  3. Click the Open button to open the properties associated with the corresponding Human Task.

  4. Click the button below the "Detailed properties for a participating human task" line.

  5. Click the Details tab on the properties window.

  6. Type bpe/staff/wpswmmconfiguration in the text field beside the "JNDI name of staff plug-in configuration" label.

In addition, for every staff activity the staff verbs have to be specified for the various activity roles. Use the following steps to specify the staff verbs for the staff activity:

  1. Click on the staff activity you want to define as the client user interface identifier.

  2. Click the Details tab on the Process model properties window.

    A message displays stating that a Human Task implements the underlying staff action.

  3. Click the Open button to open the properties associated with the corresponding Human Task.

  4. Select the appropriate role, for example Potential Owner, from the list of roles below the Receiver settings section.

  5. Select a verb, for example User by user ID, from the properties window and specify the necessary parameters. See the following information for details on mandatory parameters for the selected verb.

The following set of verbs is supported by staff plug-ins:

See Member Manager staff plug-in provider for more information.

 

Parent topic:

Developing business process applications

 

Related concepts

Setting up the development environment for process applications
Initiating a process instance

 

Related information

Creating the task processing portlet
Migrating business process applications