IBM Business Automation Workflow

Optimize core business processes with Business Automation Workflow. Workflow process automation orchestrates multiple business processes (straight-through, human-assisted, or case management) within operations and provides visibility into each step.

Business Automation Workflow consists of the Workflow Authoring and Workflow Runtime patterns for automating processes.
The diagram shows the authoring and runtime environments of Workflow Process Service.

Workflow Authoring

Workflow Authoring provides a seamless authoring experience to iteratively develop workflow automations with the following tasks.

  • Create and manage your workflow automations and automation services. Create your processes, user interfaces, and service integrations in the designer.
  • Create and publish workflow automation services to Business Automation Studio and reuse the published automation services in your process workflows and business applications.
  • Develop your workflows iteratively by testing in the integrated playback runtime environment during development. You can further test your user scenarios by interacting with tasks in Workplace or Process Portal.

    To access the full-text search, advanced filtering functions, and the Teams dashboard in Workplace, you must enable those features in Workflow Authoring by using the capabilities.fullTextSearch.enable parameter, and configure Elastic.

  • Configure the events that you want to capture in IBM Business Automation Insights and test the output.
  • Access the process apps that are running in the playback server from Process Admin Console.
When your workflow automation is ready for further testing, staging, or production, you can install it to the runtime by using the operations REST APIs. For more information, see Operations REST APIs.
Note:
  • Workflow automations and versions in Business Automation Studio correspond to process apps and snapshots in the APIs and Process Admin Console.

Workflow Runtime

Workflow Runtime provides a federated enterprise runtime environment that can support a wide range of process workflows and service orchestrations. You can configure a runtime environment for testing, staging, or production. You run, manage, and administer your workflows, work with tasks, and view business metrics.
  • Install your process app snapshots to the runtime environment and administer running processes by using the operations REST APIs. See Operations REST APIs.
  • Interact programmatically with processes and tasks by using runtime APIs. See Process REST APIs.
  • Manage and complete your work in Workplace, which offers you a seamless and consolidated user experience to organize, prioritize, track, and complete different types of work in the same application. Alternatively, you can manage and complete your work in Process Portal. See Managing work.

    Process Federation Server enhances the collaboration between workflow server and Workplace or Process Portal. Process Federation Server provides business workers with a single point of access to all their tasks, from a single Workplace or Process Portal, regardless of the Business Automation Workflow system on which the process artifacts are stored.

  • Gain insight into your business. IBM Business Automation Insights captures events that your workflow generates, aggregates the events into business-relevant KPIs, and displays them on meaningful dashboards so that you can analyze your business data. See IBM Business Automation Insights.
  • View, manage, and administer process apps in the Process Admin Console. You can administer and configure runtime settings for process apps that are installed on a workflow server. For more information, see Administering.