References to external ECM systems from an IBM BPM folder

When you work with IBM® Business Process Manager folders in the IBM BPM managed store and add document and folder references to it, IBM BPM communicates with the Enterprise Content Management (ECM) system that contains the documents and folders by using the Content Management Interoperability Services (CMIS) standard. The ECM system must support certain operations and capabilities to use all of the IBM BPM functions.

The interaction between the references on IBM BPM and an external ECM system is explained.

Retrieving folders by path

When you define the initial folder structure in the Folders tab of a process model, you can define folder references and identify the folders by their path. Also, you can define precondition triggers for activities based on a document that is filed into folder. To identify a folder, you specify its path. To look up folders by path, IBM BPM uses the getObjectByPath operation of the CMIS object services. If you use the function to automatically create folders, IBM BPM assumes that it can determine the parent of a folder by removing the last part of the folder path. For example, if the folder path is /a/b/c, then IBM BPM assumes that the parent folder can be identified by the /a/b path.

Adding references to documents or folders

When you add a reference to a document or folder, you specify their identifier in the Add document to folder or Add folder to folder operation on the IBM BPM managed store. IBM BPM looks up the entity in the ECM system by using the getObject operation of the CMIS object services.

Retrieving the children of an IBM BPM folder

You use the Get children operation on the IBM BPM managed store to get the children, the sub folders and documents, of an IBM BPM folder. To fulfill this request IBM BPM invokes the query operation of the CMIS discover services in the ECM systems that contain the referenced documents and folders. The CMIS query uses a WHERE clause to filter on the folders by their cmis:objectId and for documents by their cmis:versionSeriesId.

For ECM systems that do not support the ability to query by these properties, IBM BPM degrades their usage within an IBM BPM folder. You can add references to documents and folders from such ECM systems, but when you invoke the Get children operation, IBM BPM does not query the additional information for them. IBM BPM includes only the following properties for these items in the response:

cmis:objectId
cmis:versionSeriesId (documents only)
cmis:objectTypeId
cmis:baseTypeId
cmis:name

The allowable actions for such items are also not accurate. Items that are deleted in the ECM system are still shown in the IBM BPM folder, but if you perform operations on them, for example to view a document, these operations will fail.