Making business data available in searches and views

Before business users in IBM® Process Portal can search for business data across process instances or within task lists, you need to configure each variable in the IBM Process Designer to be visible in Process Portal.

Before you begin

IBM BPM version 8570 cumulative fix 3 You can perform this task in the IBM Process Designer desktop or web editor. This procedure describes the steps in the web Process Designer.

About this task

Important: The following information applies to both Heritage Process Portal and Process Portal.

As you model the business data for your process application, consider what type of data business users might want to search on while they are working with the process. Also consider which business data provides necessary information about a task to help users complete the task from the task view if it is an inline task, or which provides a quick way for users to understand something about that task instance without opening the coach for the task. These are the variables that you need to configure in the Process Designer to be searchable and viewable in the Process Portal.

Business data fields are returned differently depending on how you use Process Portal:

The default scenario is that you use Process Portal with an IBM BPM back end, without IBM Process Federation Server. In this case, all modeled business data fields of process applications that are deployed to Process Server are detected, even if no instance of the process application is running.
If you use Process Portal with Process Federation Server as its back end, business data fields are detected if two conditions are met: a task is created for an instance of the process application and the business data fields of the instance have non-null values.

Procedure

Open a process that includes the variables you want to configure and go to the Variables tab.
For each variable whose runtime values you want to search or to make viewable in the Process Portal task list, select the Visible in Process Portal check box in the Details section. For complex variables, be sure to select the check box for each parameter you want to make available.
Note: Only process-level variables can be made available as business data for searches, but not variables that are defined, for example, inside human services.
In the Alias text box, type a name for the variable. This is the name to use when performing searches in Process Portal. This is also the name that is seen by users in Process Portal when they view the data related to tasks in their task list. If you use camel case, a mix of upper and lowercase letters to indicate word boundaries, the label for the variable is parsed into a multi-word string. For example, if your search alias is customerName, the label for the variable in Process Portal will be Customer Name.
Note: The search alias must be unique to the variable type throughout the process server on which the process runs. If a variable is shared by multiple processes (for example, a parent process and its linked processes) and you want the variable to be searchable in all of those processes, you must define the same search alias for the variable in each of the processes where it is used.
Click Save or Finish Editing.

Results

Now when IBM Business Process Manager runs instances of the process that contain the configured variables, you can search for process instances and associated tasks that include these variables in Process Portal. The variables that are available to search are also viewable to business users when they view the associated task in their task list.

Note: Business data that is mapped to a task is saved as instance business data upon task completion. Therefore, you do not see business data updates in Process Portal until the task is complete.

What to do next

If you are a business user and own a saved search, you can select, in Process Portal, which columns to display in search results and you can define a display name for each business data object:

In the saved search area of Process Portal, click Edit Columns. In the Available Columns window, each business data object is marked with an asterisk.
Select a column label and type in the Display name field.

You can also use business data as conditions by clicking Add in the Filter Criteria section and selecting the appropriate business data field.

Important: Even if you change the display name in Process Portal, the name that you must use for searches and conditions is the name that was defined in Process Designer.