What's new in IBM Business Automation Workflow V21.0.3

Business Automation Workflow on containers

Enable an installation in all namespaces on a cluster

If you are using Red Hat OpenShift, you can now install Business Automation Workflow in all the namespaces on a cluster. Namespaces partition a single cluster into multiple virtual clusters, which can be used by multiple users, teams of users, or a single user with multiple applications without concern for unwanted interaction. Before you choose to install in All namespaces, making the operator available to all users and projects, contact the cluster administrator or architect who defines your namespace strategy. They can explain how the development pipelines are partitioned.

New profile deployment sizes

Business Automation Workflow deployments now use small, medium, or large deployment profiles. For each profile, the CPU and memory requirement for the specified workload is predefined by the operator. You can still overwrite these values by adding the relevant parameters to the custom resource.

Custom resource status is now shown in the OpenShift console

Information about the processing of your custom resource is now displayed in the OpenShift console, even during installation. The OpenShift console shows the status conditions for each resource. Each condition contains a set of properties that describe the status of a component, including the following information:

• reason: A one-word reason for the last status transition.
• message: Details about the last transition.
• lastTransitionTime: The time of the last status change.

The information provides the current state of the component, and indicates what actions, if any, are needed. For components that are not selected to be installed, the status shows NotInstalled. The status of all components report when components are Ready and available for use, or NotReady. The URL link to access each service in your custom resource is also part of the new status information.

New support for Linux on IBM Z

Linux on IBM Z (s390x) is now a supported cluster architecture to install Business Automation Workflow.

Author, run, and operate your workflow applications more efficiently

Experience more support for low-code REST service invocation

• The x-codegen-request-body-name OpenAPI vendor extension is now supported. If an operation contains a value for x-codegen-request-body-name, it is displayed as the input name for the body parameter in IBM Process Designer instead of the default parameter name body.
• When you are discovering a REST service from a local file, a human-readable name for the REST service is suggested that is based on the title of the OpenAPI definition.

Work more efficiently

Receive notifications when new work is assigned to you

You can now enable email notifications in Workplace if you want to be informed when a new task is assigned to you or your team. For quick access, the email notification includes a direct link to the new task. Before you can enable the notification function, the email environment must be configured to send Workplace notifications. For more information, see Completing work and Configuring email notifications.

Display events in the Case Calendar view

You can use the Case Calendar view to display events. You can configure the Case Calendar view by using configuration properties. For more information, see Case Calendar view.

Display extended history for a case in the Case Visualizer view

You can use the Case Visualizer view to display extended history for a case. You can configure the Case Visualizer view by using configuration properties. For more information, see Case Visualizer view.

Document upload restrictions by MIME type

You can restrict document upload by MIME type, by specifying server-side configuration options in the 100Custom.xml file in a document list coach view. For more information, see, Configuring document management security

Security features

Configure the number of REST calls to the server

You can use the <max-request-per-three-seconds> parameter in the 100Custom.xml configuration file to control the number of REST calls to the server within a 3-second time interval. The default value, which is configurable, is set to 30. For more information, see Configuring <max-request-per-three-seconds>.

IBM Process Federation Server

Support backup and restoration of federated systems indexes

Process Federation Server now provides dedicated REST APIs you can use to back up and restore federated systems' Elasticsearch indexes. In case of a major failure, you can resume indexing from a previous backup state rather than completely rebuilding the index from scratch..

For more information, see Backing up and restoring Process Federation Server Elasticsearch indexes.

Supported configurations

Find out about the supported configurations for Business Automation Workflow.