Creating an event handler for an Enterprise Content Management system

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To obtain information about content events that occur on an Enterprise Content Management (ECM) server, you must install an event handler on the ECM system. The event handler notifies the IBM® Business Automation Workflow system of the events by calling the appropriate IBM BPM APIs. These events can be received by processes on your IBM Business Automation Workflow system.

About this task

  • If you use IBM FileNet® Content Manager, you do not need to write your own event handler, you only need to perform the actions described in Using the event handler for FileNet Content Manager.
  • If you do not use FileNet Content Manager you must write your own event handler for your ECM system. Familiarize yourself with your ECM system and its framework for implementing and configuring an event handler. Plan for the specific requirements of your ECM system.
Tip: You can find the source files for the FileNet Content Manager event handler in install_root\BPM\EventHandlers\ECM\FileNet\filenet-bpm-event-handler-51-src.jar. To understand the concepts behind the FileNet Content Manager event handler, refer to the FileNet Content Manager documentation topics Events and subscriptions.

Procedure

  1. Identify which ECM events you need your event handler to support.
    The following table lists the Business Automation Workflow names for the ECM events that are supported by Business Automation Workflow.
    Table 1. ECM events supported by Business Automation Workflow
    Supported ECM events Object types that the event can apply to
    CheckedIn Document
    CheckedOut Document
    CheckOutCanceled Document
    ClassChanged Folder or Document
    ClassifyCompleted Document
    Created Folder or Document
    Deleted Folder or Document
    Filed Folder
    Frozen Document
    Locked Folder or Document
    PublishCompleted Document
    PublishRequested Document
    SecurityUpdated Folder or Document
    StateChanged Document
    Unfiled Folder
    Unlocked Folder or Document
    Updated Folder or Document
    VersionDemoted Document
    VersionPromoted Document
    Tip: For more details about the event types, refer to the REST API ECM event resource reference topic.
  2. For each event that you need notifications of, identify the corresponding event name that is used by your ECM system.
  3. Plan how your ECM event handler will obtain the information required to connect to the Business Automation Workflow system.
    For example, the FileNet Content Manager event handler, BPMEventHandler, loads the connection information defined in a properties file that is stored in FileNet Content Manager.
  4. Plan your code to receive event notifications in your ECM system and translate them into the corresponding calls to the appropriate Business Automation Workflow system.
    For example, in the FileNet Content Manager event handler BPMEventHandler, the BPMEventType method translates the FileNet Content Manager event types to the corresponding Business Automation Workflow event notification API method names.
  5. Write your event handler according to your requirements and the event handling framework provided by your ECM system.
    Refer to the documentation for your ECM system.
  6. Deploy and configure your event handler on your ECM system.
  7. Verify that your event handler is called for the required events, and that it transmits the events to the appropriate Business Automation Workflow server.
  8. Verify that you can create an Business Automation Workflow process that receives the event notifications from your ECM system. Perform Subscribing to document and folder events.