What's new in IBM Business Automation Workflow 23.0.2

Edit online
Learn about the many new features in IBM® Business Automation Workflow 23.0.2.
Tip: For the new features of Business Automation Workflow in IBM Cloud Pak for Business Automation, see What's new in 2023.0.2 - December 2023.

For information about features that are deprecated or removed in 23.0.2, see Deprecated and removed features of IBM Business Automation Workflow.

Update to Business Automation Workflow 23.0.2 to experience all the highlights, such as these added abilities and improvements.

Work efficiently with tasks, workflows, and cases

Be more productive working with tasks, workflows, and cases in Workplace
  • Complete work more efficiently by turning on task prioritization in Workplace on Business Automation Workflow traditional.
  • Visually track the progress of a process in Workplace through the process diagram that provides an overview of the process.
  • Easily access and work with cases in Workplace from a separate Cases list in a federated environment. You can also quickly access your recent work through the Recent cases and Favorite cases lists.New information Learn more...
  • Enable the BPMN and Case event emitter with IBM Business Automation Insights Extension for Workflow.
  • Mexican Spanish (es_MX) is now available as a locale option with the appropriate format of dates, times, and currency data in Workplace and Process Portal. New information Learn more...
Process Admin Console
  • Efficiently manage and monitor process applications in an improved Process Admin Console. You can now use the Swagger UI to view and manage the health of your system by using the health management REST APIs.

Back to top

Build process applications and case solutions

Model your processes more efficiently
  • Efficiently search for and work with variables in client-side human services with the new Variables filter.
  • Enable rich text activity description in your client-side human services to format and stylize user task descriptions. New information Learn more...
  • Efficiently define the input and output data mapping of your client-side human services by using an intuitive graphical data handling without having to use JavaScript.
  • Enable the ability to clear the selection in the list in the enhanced Single select view of the UI toolkit for better interactions and an improved page validation. New information Learn more...
  • Push a descriptor file of your workflow project to a configured Github repository to trigger the continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipeline. New information Learn more...
  • For Process Portal, the default email template for task notification assignment is now the Workplace template. Task links that users access from the notifications point to Workplace instead of Process Portal. To use the former Process Portal template, override the default template configuration. New information Learn more...
Model your case solutions more efficiently
  • Enable users to easily build a list of related cases that share common criteria or a similar pattern. New information Learn more...
  • Use the default process-backed actions and client-side human service views and pages when you work with new case solutions created in Workflow Center. A new option is available to show or hide the classic case features, if needed.
  • Select which case solutions you can access and modify from your Navigator desktop. New information Learn more...
  • Enable users to start more flexible case activities that follow the business process logic that was in place when the case instance was created, rather than the logic of the latest case snapshot. New information Learn more...
  • Use the newly added SetActivityPropertyValues and getActivityPropertyValues JavaScript APIs and the improved documentation for parentCase Activity properties when you work with case JavaScript APIs in your processes and service flows. New information Learn more...
  • Use improved case REST APIs that facilitate the continuous integration and deployment of case projects and legacy case solutions to different environments. New REST APIs have also been added for importing and applying security and audit manifests.

Back to top

Serviceability

OpenSearch image
Business Automation Workflow on containers now uses an OpenSearch image instead of Elasticsearch.New information Learn more...
More flexibility around the Content Platform Engine BPM content object store
You can now specify the external Content Platform Engine BPM content object store name when you run the updateBPMExternalECM command by using the optional parameter -objectStoreName. If you want to reuse an existing BPM content object store, you can omit the check for whether it already exists by using the optional parameter -omitBPMContentStoreValidation true when running the setBPMExternalECM or updateBPMExternalECM command. New information Learn more...

Back to top

Process Federation Server

  • Use the Process Federation Server Runtime data REST API to monitor and gain insights into the federated environment through a hierarchical JSON view of the Process Federation Server instance configuration augmented with runtime data and key performance indicators (KPI). New information Learn more...
  • Improved reference information for Process Federation Server messages. New informationLearn more...

Back to top

Install and upgrade

Business Automation Workflow on-premises
  • Deployment of case projects and legacy case solutions are aligned to support Business Automation Workflow rolling upgrades by removing the requirement of upgrading your development environment before upgrading your staging and production environments. New information Learn more...
  • You can now use the certificate-based authentication method for PostgreSQL. New information Learn more...
Business Automation Workflow on containers
  • For a simplified deployment topology and smaller footprint for Business Automation Workflow on containers, the following changes are made in this release:
    • Java Message Service (JMS) is embedded in the Workflow runtime server.
    • Process Federation Server and Application Engine are removed from the default topology.
    • Workplace is embedded in the Workflow runtime server.
    • The full text search feature is embedded in Business Automation Workflow and is disabled by default. You can choose to enable full text search in the custom resource (CR) file. New information Learn more...
    You can still choose to enable Process Federation Server and use Workplace running on Application Engine by configuring the desktop in Business Automation Navigator. New information Learn more...
  • You can now configure more than one target object store (TOS) for case management in Business Automation Workflow. New information Learn more...
  • In previous versions of Business Automation Workflow, the catalog sources always used the global catalog namespace (GCN) operator-marketplace. The GCN is a special namespace that contains operators that can be subscribed to from any namespace in the cluster. Now, the cluster administrator, or a non-administrator user that is granted an administrator ClusterRole, can also install the catalog sources in a single namespace for users who want to discover and install the Business Automation Workflow operators privately. New information Learn more...
  • The ibm-pak plug-in uses a new File-Based Catalog (FBC) to mirror all the operator packages that are needed to install your chosen capabilities. The mirror command then selects the relevant images by the architecture of the worker nodes that you want to use. New information Learn more...
  • All the installation scripts that are provided in the cert-kubernetes archive of the Business Automation Workflow CASE package now support Linux® on Power® (ppc64le) and Linux on IBM Z (s390x) based VM/machines (CentOS Stream/RHEL/MacOS). The Advanced Micro Devices (amd64/x86) architecture is still supported. New information Learn more...

To find out more about the supported environments for Business Automation Workflow, see the detailed system requirements.

Back to top

Security and compliance

Restrict internet access for a Business Automation Workflow on containers deployment
A new custom resource parameter (sc_restricted_internet_access) is set to true by default to restrict all outbound traffic. When set to true, you must create network policies to allow pods access to intended destinations. If you want a Business Automation Workflow pod to connect to the internet, for example, create a policy that allows outbound traffic to that specific IP address. New information Learn more...

Back to top