Publishing applications

Applications that are ready to be published are marked with a Publish requested tag in the Business applications page of IBM Business Automation Studio. By publishing these applications, you make them available to Business Automation Navigator for deployment.

Before you begin

In Team Management, create an Application Administrator team for each environment and add the corresponding ban_environment_administrators LDAP group for the environment to each team:
- Development environment: ban_dev_administrators
- Test environment: ban_test_administrators
- Production environment: ban_run_administrators
For information about Team Management, see Team Management.
Log in to Business Automation Navigator as an administrator. Ensure that Business Automation Navigator is in Platform or Platform and Content mode, which exposes the available Application Engine connection.

About this task

To make an application that's ready for publishing available in Business Automation Navigator, export the application from Business Automation Studio, then import it into the Business Automation Navigator.

Exporting the application: When you export the application, you export a snapshot of the application from Business Automation Studio. If no snapshot exists for the application to be exported, you are prompted to create one. The required format for the application export is Export this project to be published (.zip).

Importing the application: To import the application into the Business Automation Navigator, set up a working connection to the Application Engine, which has the application package. Once connected to the Application Engine, you can pick up the applications that you want to import.

Procedure

To publish an application:

Log in to Business Automation Studio.
Click Business applications.
In the Business applications page, identify the application to be published and click Export on the application tile.
- If no snapshot exists for the application, use the Create a snapshot dialog to specify the snapshot details.
- In the export dialog, select the Export this project to be published (.zip) file format for the snapshot export.
Save the ZIP file. You'll import it in a later step.
Log in to Business Automation Navigator as an administrator.
In the Connections page, an Application Service connection was automatically created for you when the container was deployed. Select the Application Service connection, click Edit and Connect, and log in to the Application Engine as an administrator.
Once connected, the Applications tab is enabled, providing a list of applications that are published in the Application Engine.
From the Applications tab, import the application that you exported in step 3 into Business Automation Navigator.
Imported applications can be new applications that you're bringing into Business Automation Navigator for the first time, or applications that were deleted from Business Automation Navigator and imported into Application Engine again for redeployment.
When the import of the application snapshot completes, you can return to the Business Automation Studio to mark the application as published.
In the Permissions tab for the imported application, add the appropriate Application Administrator team for the environment in which the application runs.
From Desktop, you can create a desktop and add your connection to your desktop.
Then you can access your desktop from
```
https://navigator_URL/?desktop=mydesktop
```
For information about creating desktops, see Defining desktops in the IBM Content Navigator documentation.
Note:
If the Business Automation Navigator administrator imports a new version of an application, the desktop must be refreshed before the application can be used in the desktop.

What to do next

Now that the application is published, you can add it to the Business Automation Navigator configuration, so users can launch the application and work with it. See Adding applications.