Overview: Integrating external services

Business Automation Workflow can integrate many different external services in your process applications.

The following sections describe some possible external service integrations.

REST services

For information about invoking REST APIs from Business Automation Workflow, see the following topics:

Web services

For information about discovering and invoking web services from Business Automation Workflow, see Invoking a web service.

IBM Operational Decision Manager business rules

For more information about using Operational Decision Manager business rules and decision services, see Using IBM ODM business rules.

IBM Watson services

Watson provides artificial intelligence (AI) services that you can integrate in your process applications by using the Business Automation Workflow REST service integration capabilities. For information about the services that are available, see Watson Documentation.

IBM Cloud services

Requests to IBM® Cloud services must be authenticated. Some service instances, require that you authenticate to the API by using IBM Cloud Identity and Access Management (IAM) tokens. You can pass a bearer token in an Authorization header or an API key.

Tokens support authenticated requests without embedding service credentials in every call.

API keys use basic authentication. If you pass in an API key, specify the string apikey for the user name and the value of the API key as the password.

For information about the IAM Identity Services API and to download the OpenAPI definition, see IAM Identity Services API.
For information about using a Watson service API key to get an IAM token, see Getting an IAM token by using a Watson service API key.

For information about the authentication options that are available for the IBM Cloud service that you are using, see https://cloud.ibm.com/apidocs.

Blockchain and Hyperledger Composer services

For a tutorial that explains how to integrate an external blockchain service in a process application, see the developerWorks article Combine business process management and blockchain.
For a tutorial that explains how to make your business processes react to blockchain events, see the developerWorks article Enable business processes to react to blockchain events.
For information about using Hyperledger Composer, see Build Blockchain applications and business networks your way.

IBM App Connect

You can use IBM App Connect to integrate data, apps and APIs across hybrid cloud environments. This allows connectivity with services such as Salesforce, Marketo, Google sheets, Google Drive, and Dropbox. The integration with IBM App Connect supports both outbound invocations and event-driven inbound invocations from and to your Business Automation Workflow process applications. To learn more about using IBM App Connect, see IBM App Connect.

The following figure illustrates how IBM App Connect can be used to integrate common app services with Business Automation Workflow process apps that are running on prem or on cloud.

Figure showing IBM App Connect interfacing cloud apps such as GoogleSheets, GoogleDrive, Salesforce, and Marketeo to BPM on cloud and BPM on prem.

The following steps outline how you combine IBM App Connect with Business Automation Workflow:

Business Automation Workflow invoking IBM App Connect

Integrating IBM App Connect in your Business Automation Workflow process application is supported by using external services in your process applications, in particular by using REST service invocation.

To prepare an external service integration, go to your IBM App Connect dashboard, download the OpenAPI specification for the REST service that you want to use as an external service in Business Automation Workflow. Also, note the IBM App Connect username and password that Business Automation Workflow must use when invoking the service.
To invoke an API that is provided by your IBM App Connect instance from an Business Automation Workflow process application, use Process Designer to create a new external service based on the OpenAPI specification that you downloaded from IBM App Connect, and enter the IBM App Connect username and password on the settings tab for the appropriate REST server.
For a step-by-step tutorial that shows how to call a Salesforce API from Business Automation Workflow, see the developerWorks article Go code-free! Create an API in IBM App Connect and call it from IBM Business Process Manager - Create a contact in Salesforce as part of your business process flow.

IBM App Connect interacting with Business Automation Workflow

IBM App Connect can interact with Business Automation Workflow by using event-driven invocation of your Business Automation Workflow process applications.

To invoke an Business Automation Workflow API from an IBM App Connect event-driven flow, specify the application event that will trigger the Business Automation Workflow API call, for example, the Google Sheets new spreadsheet event, add an HTTP invoke method, and specify the Business Automation Workflow REST API call, including basic authorization HTTP header to access Business Automation Workflow. For more information about using the Business Automation Workflow API to start a process, see Starting a process by using a REST API call.
For a general tutorial that shows how to call out from App Connect to any HTTP endpoint, such as the Business Automation Workflow REST API, see the developerWorks article Introducing the App Connect HTTP connector.