A process can call another process through a linked process
activity. When the linked process activity is triggered at run time,
the linked process is run. After the linked process is completed,
the parent process resumes execution. When you group together related
activities in a separate BPD, instead of in a subprocess, you can
reuse that process in other processes that share that set of activities.
For example, the steps for creating a customer account might be common
to several different processes. If you group these steps together
in a Create Customer Account process, you can use linked process activities
to call this process from all processes that require it.
About this task
Linked processes encapsulate logically related steps within
a process while retaining the high-level view of the parent process.
However, linked processes differ from subprocesses because they can
be accessed and instantiated from processes other than a single parent
process. In previous product releases, linked processes were known
as nested processes.
Linked process activities are represented
in the process diagram by an activity element with a thick border
and an expandable subprocess marker.
Procedure
- Open the parent business process definition (BPD) in the
Process Designer.
- Drag an activity from the palette onto the diagram area,
and type the name of the activity in the highlighted box.
- In the Implementation tab of the
Properties view, select Linked Process. The visualization of the activity in the diagram is updated
to reflect the Linked Process activity type.
- Specify another process to call during the execution of
your process.
- To select an existing process, click Select,
and choose the business process definition.
- To create a reusable process:
- Click New.
- Enter a name for the new process and click Finish.
In the editor, continue to specify this new process definition, or
return to the parent process.
- You can also call a linked process
dynamically by using a variable defined in the parent process.
- In the parent process, connect the linked process activity
to other elements in the process flow.
- Variables in a linked process activity are local to the
linked process. If you want to pass data into or out of a linked process
activity, you must map the inputs and outputs of your linked process
to the inputs and outputs of the linked process activity in the parent.
Complete one of the following steps in the Data Mapping tab
of the Properties view for the linked process activity:
- If you declared variables in the parent process that have
the same names and data types as the input and output variables in
the linked process, use auto-mapping to have the inputs or outputs
of the linked process automatically mapped to variable defined in
the parent process.
- If the variables declared in the parent process do not match
the variables of the linked process inputs or outputs, you can manually
select the variables to map.