Human services

You can use human services to provide interfaces that users can use to manage their process and case work in web-based applications.

At run time, people perform tasks using the user interfaces that are generated from human services in web-based applications, such as IBM Process Portal. You can also use heritage human services to supply user interfaces for processes that you create in the web editor and run in Process Portal.

Client-side human services

Client-side human services are the newer human services, and use web technology to improve the human-service performance and provide support for business process, data, and process instance management.
Create and edit client-side human services in the designer, run them on the client side in the web browser, and use them to call the server for data only when necessary.

You can use views, coaches, client-side scripts, services, events, and nested client-side human services to create a client-side human service that runs and can be tested and refined entirely in a web browser. Enhanced authoring capabilities such as WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) and responsive design elements help you build complex user interfaces and ensure scalability for multiple devices.

Depending on what configuration you want your client-side human service to have, you can specify in the creation wizard whether you want to use the new client-side human service as a root service or as a nested service. You can revisit the selection that you made in the Overview tab.

Root client-side human services

Root client-side human services are the top-level, stand-alone services that you can use for a task, case, or dashboard. Root services cannot be nested in other client-side human services, but can contain one or more single- or multi-layered nested services.

Nested client-side human services

Nested client-side human services are meant for reuse. A nested service contains a set of common steps that you can reuse in one or multiple other client-side human services. You can nest your reusable service either in a root service or in another nested service. Multiple nested layers are supported. A nested service cannot be used in a process or case directly, for either tasks or instance user interfaces.

Restriction: To avoid unexpected behavior at run time, do not use a circular nesting pattern when you model your client-side human services. For example, if your model includes a client-side human service A that nests a client-side human service B, do not configure B to circle back and nest A.

For more information about nested client-side human services, see Reusing client-side human services.

To learn more about the differences between heritage human services and client-side human services, see Difference between client-side human services and heritage human services.

Heritage human services (deprecated)

The earlier version of human services, which you used to create user interfaces for business process management in earlier product versions. You can edit heritage human services in the designer, run them on the server, and use them to supply user interfaces to web-based applications.

You can use coaches, server scripts, services, and events to create a heritage human service that runs and can be tested on the server. Heritage human services are the only type of human services that can call other heritage human services. Deprecated artifacts, such as Send Alert, are not available for heritage human service authoring in the designer.