Managing process apps, case solutions, branches, and snapshots
The Workflow Center repository provides a structured hierarchy to help you manage multiple process development efforts.
Overview
As shown in the following figure and described in Table 1, the Workflow Center repository includes process apps, case solutions, branches, and snapshots:
| Content type | Description |
|---|---|
| Process apps | Containers for the process models and supporting implementations that BPM analysts and developers create in IBM® Process Designer. You should create a process app for each business process to be automated using IBM Business Automation Workflow. |
| Case solutions | A case solution is a set of web pages, content, and process definitions that provide a framework so that you can manage cases. |
| Branches | Optional subdivisions in a process app based on team tasks or process app versions. You can determine if additional branches are necessary for each process app and, if so, enable them at any time. |
| Snapshots | Record the state of the items within a process app, case solution, or branch at a specific point in time. From the Workflow Center console, you can create snapshots of your process apps and case solutions. You can also deploy particular snapshots of your process apps and case solutions on the servers in development, test, staging, and production environments. |
On Workflow Server, there is one snapshot that is marked as default for each process app or case solution. This snapshot is used to start instances when a process, case, or service is run and a specific snapshot is not provided.
- In Workflow Center, the current (tip) snapshot is a special snapshot context that is the most current version of any artifact in a branch, process app, or case solution.
- Each branch is a parallel version of a process app or toolkit, and each branch has a current snapshot.
- The current (tip) snapshot is used to run instances when a process, case, or service is running and a specific snapshot is not provided. If you don't want an instance to run on the current snapshot, you must select a specific snapshot.
- When a process, case, or a service is started for a current (tip) snapshot, any changes that are made to the current snapshot are visible to that instance or service during its execution.
- If a specific snapshot is used to start an instance or a service, changes to the process app or case solution are not visible to that instance when it is running. If the specific snapshot is the current snapshot, the instance continues on the specific snapshot even if the current snapshot changes.
Creating and maintaining high-level library items
See the following topics to learn how to create and maintain process apps, case solutions, branches, and snapshots:
| Task | Description |
|---|---|
| Managing process applications | Create and maintain containers where BPM analysts and developers can develop process models and underlying implementations. |
| Designing your case management solution | Identify what user activities are needed to accomplish the main user goal. Decide what business-level activities and steps you need, and then group those activities and steps into a case. |
| Managing and using toolkits | Enable users to share library items across process apps and case solutions. |
| Managing tracks | Create subdivisions in process apps to enable development of separate versions of the same application in Process Designer. |
| Managing snapshots | Capture and save the items in a process app, case solution, or track at specific points in time and remove snapshots that are no longer in use. |
Housekeeping tasks in Workflow Center
Workflow Center holds snapshots of process apps and toolkits as they are developed. Every named (versioned) snapshot that you create in Process Designer is saved in Workflow Center. In addition, every time you save work in Process Designer, an unnamed snapshot is saved in Workflow Center. These snapshots accumulate, so you should periodically delete unneeded snapshots. You can configure Workflow Center to automatically delete unnamed snapshots that you no longer need to keep on the server.
You can archive process apps, case solutions, toolkits, and snapshots. Archiving in Workflow Center does not move the artifact to a secondary location; it only removes it from displaying in the GUI views. To remove a process app, case solution, toolkit, or snapshot from the system, archive it, and then delete it.