References to external ECM systems from a BPM folder

When you work with folders in the BPM managed store and add document and folder references to it, communication with the Enterprise Content Management (ECM) system that contains the documents and folders uses the Content Management Interoperability Services (CMIS) standard. The ECM system must support certain operations and capabilities to use all the workflow functions.

Retrieving folders by path

When you define the initial folder structure in the Folders tab of a process model, you can define folder references and identify the folders by their path. Also, you can define precondition triggers for activities based on a document that is filed into folder. To identify a folder, you specify its path. To look up folders by path, the getObjectByPath operation of the CMIS object services is used. If you use the function to automatically create folders, the parent of a folder is determined by removing the last part of the folder path. For example, if the folder path is /a/b/c, then the parent folder is identified by the /a/b path.

Adding references to documents or folders

When you add a reference to a document or folder, you specify their identifier in the Add document to folder or Add folder to folder operation on the BPM managed store. The entity in the ECM system is located by using the getObject operation of the CMIS object services.

Retrieving the children of a BPM folder

You use the Get children operation on the BPM managed store to get the children, the subfolders and documents of a BPM folder. To fulfill this request, the query operation of the CMIS discover services is invoked in the ECM systems that contain the referenced documents and folders. The CMIS query uses a WHERE clause to filter on the folders by their cmis:objectId and for documents by their cmis:versionSeriesId.

For ECM systems that do not support the ability to query by these properties, their usage is degraded within a BPM folder. You can add references to documents and folders from such ECM systems, but when you invoke the Get children operation, the additional information for them is not queried. Only the following properties for these items are included in the response:
  • cmis:objectId
  • cmis:versionSeriesId (documents only)
  • cmis:objectTypeId
  • cmis:baseTypeId
  • cmis:name

The allowable actions for such items are also not accurate. Items that are deleted in the ECM system are still shown in the BPM folder, but if you perform operations on them, for example to view a document, these operations will fail.