While a process is running, a user
might need to launch a new activity or set of activities, such as
updating a customer's contact information or canceling the process
instance. The process designer can define a set of these unplanned,
or ad hoc, actions to be launched by the user fromProcess Portal.
Before you begin
To perform this task, you must
be in the IBM® Process
Designer desktop
editor.
To
use ad-hoc tasks, Process Portal users
must be members of a security group that is configured for the ACTION_INJECT_TOKEN
policy. For information about security groups, see Setting up users, groups, and teams. For information about the ACTION_INJECT_TOKEN
configuration, see Configuration properties for Process Portal action policies.
For information about managing the security groups, see Creating and managing groups.
Restriction: Ad
hoc start events are not supported in simple loop or multi-instance
loop activities. The activity that calls the business process definition
(BPD) should not be configured for looping.
Procedure
To model a new activity or set of activities that a user
can launch in the normal process flow, complete the following steps:
- Open the Process Designer desktop editor.
- Open the BPD in the Designer view.
- Add an ad hoc start event to your process diagram by dragging
a start event from the palette and specifying an implementation type
of Adhoc in the Implementation tab of the Properties
view.
- Add the activity or set of activities that occur when the
start event is triggered. For example, if you are designing a process
application where business users can look up a customer order history
at any time in the normal processing of a customer order, you might
include a set of tasks for logging into the order history database
and submitting a query.
- Connect the task or tasks to the new start event. When you deploy your process application to Process Portal, business
users can launch the set of activities from the current application.
New task instances are created and appear in the task list for the
user or team that is assigned to the new ad hoc task.
Important: Ad hoc task instances that were created during the
running of a process instance must be complete before the process
instance completes.
- Optional: Ad hoc actions might be associated
only with a particular phase of the process. For example, an order
can be canceled before it has been sent out for delivery, but after
it has been delivered, the order can no longer be canceled. To make
an action available for only a certain phase of the process, complete
the following steps:
- Add phases to your BPD to define the different phases
in the running process. For example, you might have a pre-delivery
phase that contains all the customer order activities that occur before
the order ship, and a post-delivery phase that contains the activities
that occur after the order ships.
- Move the ad hoc start event to the phase in which it
should be available.
- In the Event Visibility section, to restrict the visibility
of the event by phase, select phase.
In Process Portal, the
ad hoc action is available only while the running process instance
is in the specified phase.
- Optional: Limit the type of users that run
ad hoc actions in your process. For example, you might want to limit
a credit check override action to users who belong to the managers
team. To make an action available to only a certain team of users,
complete the following steps:
- Add swimlanes to your BPD diagram and associate each
swimlane with a specific team. For example, you might have a swimlane
for customer service representatives and a swimlane for managers.
- Move the ad hoc start event to the swimlane that is
associated with the team that should be able to launch the action
in Process Portal.
- In the Event Visibility section, to restrict the visibility
of the event by swimlane select swimlane.
- Click Save or
Finish
Editing.
Results
In
Process Portal,
the ad hoc action is available only for users who belong to the specified
team.