Adding a decision task to a service flow in the Process Designer

The decision task provides a means to include decision logic in your service flow. You can use decision tables and action rules to author your decision logic by using Business Action Language (BAL). You can also export your decision logic for use in IBM® Operational Decision Manager.
Tip: For an example of how to use a decision task in a process application, and how to implement the decision logic using an action rule or a decision table, see the developerWorks article A tutorial on decisions in process applications: action rules and decision tables.

About this task

The following steps describe how to add a decision task to a service flow and then adding decision tables or action rules to the decision task.

Procedure

  1. Open the process application in the Process Designer.
  2. Create a service flow, and give it a name, for example ExpenseApprovalRequired.
  3. In the diagram of the new service flow, click the down arrow of the Activity icon in the component palette to open the sub-palette and drag the decision icon (This screen capture shows the decision task activity icon) from the palette onto the service flow diagram.
  4. In the Properties tab, enter a name for the new decision task.
  5. Connect the activity with the Start and End events.
  6. Click the Variables tab.
  7. For each input and output variable to the service flow that you need, click the + sign next to the variables section, then in the Name field, replace the default name with a more meaningful name, and click Select next to Variable type and select the type from the list.
  8. Click the Decisions tab to open the rules editor.
  9. Select your decision task.
  10. If you want to add a decision table to the decision task, perform the steps described in Using decision tables in the web Process Designer
  11. If you want to add an action rule to the decision task, perform the steps described in Using action rules in the web Process Designer

Results

You have added a decision task to a service flow, and implemented the decision logic using decision tables or action rules. The service flow can be called from within your process application.
Tip: To learn more about BAL rules and accessibility, see the IBM Operational Decision Manager knowledge center topics:
Restriction: The following variable types cannot be used with Business Action Language (BAL) rules in decision tasks: ConditionalActivity, IndexedMap, Map, NameValuePair, Record, SLAViolationRecord, SQLDatabaseType, SQLParameter, SQLResult, SQLResultSetColumn, SQLResultSetRow, SQLStatement, TWHolidaySchedule, TWTimePeriod, TWTimeSchedule, TWWorkSchedule, TaskListData, TaskListItem, TaskListProperties, TaskListFilterProperties, TaskListSortBySelectionType, XMLDocument, XMLElement, and XMLNodeList.
Restriction: You can switch the language of the rule editor in the Decisions section of the User Preferences dialog of Process Designer, but only the following languages are supported:
  • German (de)
  • English U.S. (en)
  • Spanish (es)
  • French (fr)
  • Italian (it)
  • Japanese (ja)
  • Korean (ko)
  • Dutch (nl)
  • Polish (pl)
  • Portuguese-Portugal (pt)
  • Portuguese-Brazilian (pt-br)
  • Russian (ru)
  • Swedish (sv)
  • Chinese-Simplified (zh)
  • Chinese-Traditional (zh-tw)

What to do next

If you want to export the decision task logic to create a project file that you can then import and work on in IBM Operational Decision Manager (ODM) Rule Designer, see Exporting rules and decision tables for use in Rule Designer.