Making business data available in searches and views

Before business users can search for business data across process instances or within task lists, you need to configure each variable in the designer to be visible in Workplace or Process Portal.

About this task

As you model the business data for your workflow automation, consider what type of data business users might want to search on while they are working with the process. Also consider which business data provides necessary information about a task to help users complete the task from the task view if it is an inline task, or which provides a quick way for users to understand something about that task instance without opening the coach for the task. These are the variables that you need to configure in the designer to be searchable and viewable.

In this case, all modeled business data fields of workflow automations that are deployed to the workflow server are detected, even if no instance of the workflow automation is running.

Procedure

Open a process that includes the variables you want to configure and go to the Variables tab.
For each variable whose runtime values you want to search or to make viewable in the task list, select the Expose in work environments checkbox in the Details section. For complex variables, be sure to select the checkbox for each parameter you want to make available.

Note: You can now expose business data at task activity level in addition to simple-type and nonlist variables at process level. It means that the data is available for searching when user task instances are running or have completed, allowing for effective retrieval of relevant information.
In the Alias text box, type a name for the variable. This is the name to use when you perform searches.
This is also the name that users see when they view the data that is related to tasks in their task list. If you use a mix of uppercase and lowercase letters to indicate word boundaries, the label for the variable is parsed into a multi-word string. For example, if your search alias is customerName, the label for the variable is Customer Name.

Note: The search alias must be unique to the variable type throughout the workflow server on which the process runs. If a variable is shared by multiple processes (for example, a parent process and its linked processes) and you want the variable to be searchable in all of those processes, you must define the same search alias for the variable in each of the processes where it is used. However, defining same search aliases in multiple processes (for example, a parent process and its linked processes) is not recommended. That is because there can be only one alias value for the process instance. If you update the alias value both from parent process and the linked processes, the alias value may be confusing. The search result may not be what you expected.
Click Save or Finish Editing.
For details about declaring variables for the client-side human services, see Declaring variables

Results

Now when process instances that contain the configured variables run, you can search for process instances and associated tasks that include these variables. The variables that are available to search are also viewable to business users when they view the associated task in their task list. Business data that is mapped to a task is saved as instance business data upon task completion. Therefore, you do not see business data updates until the task is complete.

Note: When you use a saved search to retrieve a task in a linked process and a multi-instance loop, only the value from the first linked process is displayed. This is a limitation when you have an exposed variable in the linked process and multiple linked processes are created. The parent process name displays as the instance name, even when the parent process launches the child process. The child process is displayed as the parent process's instance name because there is only one value for the exposed alias. All the tasks get the same value as a result.

What to do next

If you are a business user and own a saved search, you can select which columns to display in the search results.

If you're using Process Portal, you can also and define a display name for each business data object.

In Process Portal, in the saved search area, click Edit Columns. In the Available Columns window, each business data object is marked with an asterisk.
Select a column label and type in the Display name field.

Important: Even if you change the display name in Process Portal, the name that you must use for searches and conditions is the name that was defined in the designer.

You can also use business data as conditions by clicking Add in the Filter Criteria section and selecting the appropriate business data field.

Note: The string values for business data are truncated to 512 characters for the databases of all database management systems.