Creating user interfaces
In IBM® Business Process Manager (IBM BPM), human services provide the logic and user interface through which users can view and interact with business processes, data or process instances.
Client-side human services, introduced with IBM BPM V8.5.5, provide a lightweight alternative to the earlier human services in IBM BPM versions before V8.5.5. The earlier human services are referred to as heritage human services. For more information, see Client-side human services and Difference between client-side human services and heritage human services.
Human services use coaches to build the web pages that users see. Coaches are composed from user
interface controls called coach views. You can create coach views in Process Designer. For information, see Coaches and Coach views. Heritage coaches, which are deprecated and used only in heritage
human services 
in the desktop Process Designer, are composed from a fixed set of user
interfaces controls. The heritage coaches are provided primarily for compatibility with IBM BPM before version 8.0. For processes created with
IBM BPM version 8.5 5.0 and later, new coaches
are recommended.
Human services provide two types of user interfaces: task completion and stand-alone services. A task completion user interface implements a specific activity within a process instance. It has access to the details of that process instance. A stand-alone service can be a dashboard, a startable service, or a URL service. A dashboard is a stand-alone user interface that users can run at any time. Users can access dashboards through Process Portal. A startable service can be started in Process Portal at any time, whereas a URL service can be invoked directly through the URL. For information about dashboards, see Dashboards in Process Portal. With heritage human services, you can also use a coach-based dashboard as a WebSphere® portlet. For information, see Generating portlets for heritage human services exposed as dashboards.
For more information on how to implement high-performance user interfaces, refer to Chapter 3.5: Performance considerations of the Deliver Modern UI for IBM BPM with the Coach Framework and Other Approaches IBM redbook. You can also access performance-related postings from other practitioners and users on the IBM BPM dW Answers community.
- Which artifacts should I use?
IBM Business Process Manager has a number of different artifacts that you can use to create or modify a user interface. These artifacts consist of client-side human services, heritage human services, responsive coaches and coach views, heritage coaches (deprecated), and coach views or controls. - User interface concepts
People interact with process applications through user interfaces. IBM Business Process Manager provides a number of artifacts that you can use to create these user interfaces. - Modeling client-side human services
When you model a client-side human service, define the activities, the dashboards, or the instance user interfaces that case workers or people who participate in processes use in IBM Process Portal. - Building heritage human services
Build a heritage human service when you want an activity in your process or business process definition (BPD) to create an interactive task that process participants can perform in a web-based user interface. - Re-creating heritage human services as client-side human services in the web Process Designer
To gain the improved performance of a client-side human service and use its responsive features, you can convert a heritage human service into a client-side human service. The conversion might require you to re-create some of the human service logic in the web Process Designer. - Building coaches
You can build a coach as the user interface that process participants or case owners use to interact with a service. - Developing reusable coach views
To contain functions or user interface elements that another coach view or a coach can use, create a coach view. - Laying out a coach or coach view using the grid layout
You can layout a coach or coach view by using cells in a grid. - Tips for debugging coach view lifecycle method inside client-side human services
To debug your coach views inside a client-side human service, you need to use the debugging features of your browser along with the debugging features of the Inspector view in web Process Designer. - Tips for debugging coach views in Process Portal
You can debug the lifecycle method for your coach views in IBM Process Portal. - Tips for debugging coach views in Heritage Process Portal
You can debug the lifecycle method for your coach views in IBM Heritage Process Portal. - Enabling JavaScript debugging for coaches
For debugging purposes, you can set your coaches and coach views to use the readable versions of Dojo and the Coach framework JavaScript. 
Accessing coach performance statistics
As you develop and test your coach-based user interfaces, you can access statistical data that helps you evaluate coaches and ensure an optimal user interface performance.- Enabling optimization for coaches
To improve performance by reducing the amount of data that is sent back to the human service and the processing time, optimization for coaches can be enabled. By default, optimization for coaches is turned off. If required, you can enable the coach optimization by adding a new custom property in the administrative console. - Troubleshooting user interfaces
The following sections list issues that you might encounter and information about possible solutions. - Responsive settings for coach views
At run time, users can interact with your application interfaces by using a range of devices, each of which have their own characteristics, such as screen size and standard user-interface conventions. - Coach and coach view examples
This documentation includes a number of examples that demonstrate how to create and code the various parts of coaches and coach views. - Building heritage coaches (deprecated)
When you build heritage human services you can use heritage coaches, which provide the interfaces for end-user interaction. - Localizing process applications
Localizing your process applications enables users in different language locales to interact with the application interfaces in their own languages. In addition to providing translated versions of your applications for business users, you can also specify localized strings for your design-time users, for example, users that are creating their own interfaces using custom coach views that you provide.