Getting started with Process Federation Server

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IBM® Process Federation Server is an optional component for Business Automation Workflow environments. Install this component to create a federated process environment that provides business users with a single point of access to their task list and launch list, regardless of the type of process that they are working on and the Business Automation Workflow back-end system on which the process artifacts are stored.

Consider installing Process Federation Server in the following situations:

Your process applications are deployed on different Business Automation Workflow deployment environments. Your users must log on to several different instances of Process Portal to get their work done.
Your Business Automation Workflow environment contains multiple versions of Business Automation Workflow that each runs a different version of the same process application. Your users need to work with the older versions of the process applications while process instances are still running, which means that they need to log on to the Process Portal or Heritage Process Portal application that runs on the associated version of Business Automation Workflow.

Restriction: Heritage Process Portal is deprecated.

The following figure shows an overview of a federated environment and how Process Federation Server provides a single point of access to business users for all their tasks regardless of the Business Automation Workflow system on which the tasks reside.

The graphic shows the elements of a federated environment: Process Portal communicates with Process Federation Server, which in turn communicates with the federated Business Automation Workflow systems.

Process Federation Server aggregates both process and BPEL-related tasks from all the Business Automation Workflow back-end systems, including systems that run previous versions of Business Automation Workflow that are supported by Process Federation Server. You can take advantage of this support to gradually phase out process applications that are still running on previous versions, while new versions of the process applications run on the latest release of Business Automation Workflow. For more information about the Business Automation Workflow versions that are supported by Process Federation Server, see Technote 1699090 External link opens a new window or tab .

Process Portal is a coach-based portal that you can use as a starting point for creating and extending your own portals. You can configure Process Portal to work on a single system by using the process-related REST APIs. For federated environments, configure Process Portal to use the REST APIs that are provided with Process Federation Server.

Attention: Because Heritage Process Portal does not exploit federated APIs, you can use it only on single Business Automation Workflow systems.