IBM® Business Process Manager V8.0 brings a new redesigned Process Portal, integration with Enterprise Content Management systems, searching and sharing of content between process centers, enhanced governance capabilities, and various other new features to the IBM Business Process Manager V8.0 product.
- Process Portal
- Process Designer
- Process Center
- Process Server
- Installation and configuration
- Integration Designer
Process Portal
- The ability to request help from experts and collaborate with experts and other users in real time to complete work on a task
- The ability to add comments and attach documents to a specific process or task
- One-click subscription to process instances that a user is interested in, providing process-related on-screen notifications and activity updates in the subscribing user's activity stream
- Activity streams that display activity updates, such as task creation and completion, user comments and actions, and notifications that are related to tasks that are owned by a user or related to particular process instances that a user is following
- Enhanced user profile information, including avatars and configuration of notifications
Process Designer
- Process design enhancements
The following new features improve the functionality offered to process participants in Process Portal:
- Automatic starting of the next task - You can configure individual activities to start automatically if they are assigned to the same person who is assigned to the previous task. In Process Portal, if the owner of the current task is the same as the owner of the next task, the next task starts automatically when the current task is complete.
- Restricting ad hoc actions by milestone or participant group - You can configure ad hoc actions, also called user-initiated actions, to be available for only a particular phase of a process or for a particular user group by restricting the visibility of the associated ad hoc event to a particular swimlane or milestone in the business process definition (BPD).
- Configuring activities for inline completion - You can configure user tasks that involve a simple decision, such as to approve or reject a request or to choose between a set of options, so that the business user can complete it in Process Portal without having to open the Coach for the task. Instead, the user clicks a button or chooses an option with one click.
- Create reusable user interfaces and behavior for Coaches
In IBM BPM V8.0, the Coaches are completely redesigned to contain Coach Views. Coach Views are reusable user interfaces that you can create and customize. Coach Views consist of one or more other Coach Views, data bindings, layout information, and behavior. Because Coach Views are reusable, you can create a library of common user interfaces and behavior that you can use to rapidly develop new Coaches.
For greater flexibility in creating a service flow, Coach Views can broadcast boundary events that you use to connect nodes in the service.
To maintain backwards compatibility, Coaches from previous releases are now called Heritage Coaches. You can continue to use and maintain existing Heritage Coaches, but use Coach Views when creating user interfaces for services.
- BPMN 2.0: Enhanced support for error handling and termination handling
In V8.0, you now have more options when throwing and catching errors using error events in BPDs, subprocesses, and services (including Advanced Integration Services). You can throw a specific error object by selecting a variable, and you can catch specific errors and map the caught error data to a variable. Improved error-handling capabilities include the option to specify an error code and map to an error type on errors thrown from the flow of a BPD or a service using an error end event. When catching errors, you have the option to filter the errors that are caught by selecting an error from a list of all thrown errors for the linked process, subprocess, or service, using error intermediate events. Also, you can map the error data into a variable by selecting a variable that was previously defined. If you are catching specific errors, you can select the error code, map the error data, or both. Models created in earlier versions follow the behavior of the previous version.
For process instances, you have more flexibility in defining the scope of a terminate end event. You can designate whether all activities in the process instance are ended, even the parent processes. In earlier versions, terminating the entire process instance was the only option. The behavior was not visible when you designed models with terminate end events, and the behavior could not be changed. A new check box that terminates the entire process instance is cleared by default in V8.0 for new models. Therefore, the terminate end event ends activities at the level of the process where you add it, including at the level of subprocesses with lower-level activities. For process models that were created in earlier versions and migrated to V8.0, the previous behavior of terminating all activities in the process instance is preserved, unless you clear the check box. Depending on your needs, you can clear or select the check box.
- Integration with Enterprise Content Management systems
Enterprise Content Management systems help you manage documents of all types, such as records, images, and web pages. By incorporating the new Enterprise Content Management service into your business processes in IBM Business Process Manager, you can search, view, and store documents on Enterprise Content Management systems.
- You can use Coach controls to quickly build a user interface for listing, viewing, and storing documents.
- Using a graphical user interface, you can create queries to the Enterprise Content Management system without having to know the Content Management Interoperability Service (CMIS) query language syntax.
- Because the Enterprise Content Management integration is based on the industry-standard CMIS interface, IBM Business Process Manager can connect to any Enterprise Content Management product that supports CMIS.
- Data visibility
A business object can be identified as a shared business object, making the business object and its values accessible to other instances at run time.
Process Center
- Control the installation of process application snapshots with governance processes
You can apply a governance process that provides control over the installation of process application snapshots. When this governance is in place on a process application, all requests made from IBM Process Center to install a snapshot of that process application pass through the governance process. The process application snapshot is installed on a process server only after the approvals that are defined in that governance process are completed.
You also can create a governance process that reacts to the status change of a snapshot.
- Reference links
Process documentation now includes rich text content and reference links so that you can attach links to content sources or other sources. The following examples are possible reference links:
- A website or a wiki page
- A change request that is stored in a change management system
- A test case that is stored in a quality management system
- Artifacts that are managed by Open Services for Lifecycle Collaboration (OSLC)-enabled content providers
This linking capability helps you achieve traceability or provide details about the changes to a business object or service interface.
- Compare and copy
- Using the new compare and copy feature, you can learn more about
your changing business process applications:
- Understand which components are new, updated, or conflicting when comparing a snapshot to the tip of a track.
- Compare library items in a process application snapshot to the library items on the tip of a track.
- Select changed components from one snapshot and copy them to the tip of a track that has associated dependencies.
- Include an option to create a track when a process application is being imported.
- Searching and sharing of content between process centers
You can now find assets, such as toolkits, process applications, services, or business objects faster using specific syntax or tags using the Search field.
- Search for process applications, toolkits, and library items based upon specified keywords.
- Filter results by type using the directed search capability.
- Administer the Process Center index, which is used to conduct searches on the Process Center repository. The index is automatically created and maintained. You now can manually re-create or update the index. You also can configure the index to be processed automatically.
- Preview individual results and view associated process documentation.
- Register to share process content with another process center. When you register two Process Centers with each other, you can share toolkits with other users or subscribe to toolkits that other users share.
- Share toolkits that provide common or exemplary content.
- Tag key library items as they are released so that subscribers know what to use.
- Publish individual snapshots and notify subscribers that a new version is available.
- Subscribe to shared process content (toolkits) from another Process Center.
- Receive notifications when new versions (snapshots) become available.
- Compare snapshots before instances are migrated to identify the potential locations of orphaned tokens
- You can now use a policy file to compare snapshots before instances are migrated. Use the file to identify the potential locations of orphaned tokens, tokens that are associated with activities that were removed from a BPD, and specify whether each orphaned token is deleted or moved during instance migration.
Process Server
- Enterprise service bus capabilities in IBM Process Server
IBM Business Process Manager Advanced provides the same enterprise service bus capabilities that are available in WebSphere® Enterprise Service Bus. Several new features are added to the mediation flow component, and these features are available only when you deploy to IBM Process Server V8.0.
The mediation flow component is updated to include the following new features:- WebSphere eXtreme Scale primitives
These mediation flow primitives provide elastic scalability with WebSphere eXtreme Scale, giving you cache content-enhancing connectivity for throttled back ends and large binary data. Key uses include response caching, policy caching, and request persistence. The eXtreme Scale mediation primitives can be used only if WebSphere eXtreme Scale is installed.
- Service invocation-style simplification
Additional invocation-style options are available to control the invocation style for a service without the need to specify additional parameters and, in general, without the need to consider the invocation style that invoked the mediation flow. The new invocation styles are Async with deferred response, Async with callback, and As target.
- Optimized XSLT transforms
The XSL Transformation mediation primitive is renamed as the Mapping mediation primitive. You can switch easily between XSLT and Business Object Mapper transformation engines for improved functionality or performance.
- Support for WebSphere Service Registry and Repository V8.0
- WebSphere eXtreme Scale primitives
Installation and configuration
Improved installation- For a typical or custom installation using embedded IBM DB2® Express®, and for a custom installation using a local DB2 database server, the installation catches more problems earlier and provides information about how to fix problems before starting the installation process.
- The default passwords are removed from the custom installation. For a typical installation, the passwords are changed to comply with the password policy on all operating systems.
- When you install Process Server, select Production for production use, or Non-production to use Process Server only for test, staging, or development. Separate licensing is now available for non-production Process Server use.
- The IBM Support Assistant Data Collector is installed with IBM Business Process Manager so that you can search for information, investigate problems, or submit a problem report to IBM.
- The Interactive Installation and Configuration Guide is a new form used to generate a set of installation and configuration topics that are customized to your precise installation needs. In the Interactive Installation and Configuration Guide form, select the options you need for your installation scenario. As you select each option, the tool automatically removes options that are ruled out by your previous selections. For example, if you indicate that you plan to install the Express configuration, it removes Network Deployment as a potential topology. This form is available in the information center.
- Improved database functionality and reliability
- IBM Business Process Manager now supports Oracle Data Guard, a high-availability, disaster-recovery, and data-protection mechanism that is used to create, manage, and monitor one or more standby databases, ensuring that Oracle databases for production can survive disasters and data corruptions.
- You can now scale your database solution using the IBM DB2 pureScale® feature. Multiple database servers, known as members, process incoming database requests; these members operate in a clustered system and share data.
- Improved flexibility for database password changes
You can now reconfigure the database password, as needed, after your database configuration is completed. Reconfiguring the database password provides flexibility if new users take on the database administrator role, or if your company has a policy of changing passwords regularly.
Integration Designer
- Exchange information with CICS, IMS, or batch programs on z/OS
WebSphere optimized local adapter (WOLA) is a resource adapter that is added in V8.0. Using WOLA, you can create and access external services to exchange information with COBOL, PL/I, C, and C++ programs that run on Customer Information Control System (CICS®), IBM Information Management System (IMS™) transaction systems, and batch programs on z/OS®. From the New External Service wizard, you can create services using WOLA that can make outbound calls from Process Server for z/OS to programs that run in an external address space on the same z/OS system. Existing, unchanged CICS programs and IMS transactions are driven using the WOLA CICS link server and the WOLA-over-IMS Open Transaction Manager Access (OTMA) interface. You also can target CICS programs and IMS transactions using the native WOLA APIs Host Service or Receive Request.
- Increased visibility and control over system retries for SCA components in your application
You now have more control to design the system retries that you plan for your runtime environment. You can set the retry count on the properties page of your module, or you can change the retry count for more than one module using the Configure Asynchronous Retry Count wizard. When a system error occurs, asynchronous invocations retry until the specified retry count is reached. In earlier versions, modules were created with a retry count of 4. Now new modules are created with a retry count of zero. Modules from earlier versions keep existing retry settings during migration.
Unlike in previous versions, the retry behavior of mediation primitives overrides the asynchronous retry count, even if you do not specify retries. Before this release, the retry logic of these primitives was not integrated with the underlying asynchronous retry logic, so that retries could have happened when you defined no retries, or retries could have happened from both the mediation primitive and the service integration bus destination at the same time. Now the behavior defined in these mediation primitives is honored and overrides the service integration bus destination retry logic.
Because the mediation primitive overrides the asynchronous retry count, failover situations, such as when you have an issue with an application server or a messaging engine, might cause failed event manager messages. In previous releases, it was possible that these messages were handled by the service integration bus destination.
- Generate a business object map for increased speed and flexibility
You can now set the map generation type to generate a business object map in addition to an XSLT map.
- Improved error handling with support for faults in Advanced Integration Services
An interface operation with faults is supported in an Advanced Integration Service.
