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 Process Designer to be visible in Process Portal.
Before you begin
To perform this task, you must be in the IBM Process
Designer desktop
editor.
About this task
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 in-line 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
IBM Process
Portal.
Procedure
- Open the Process Designer desktop editor.
- Open a business process definition (BPD) 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 IBM Process
Portal task
list, select the Visible in Process Portal check
box in the Business Data 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 BPD runs.
If a variable is shared by multiple BPDs (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 BPDs where it is used.
- Save your changes.
Results
Now when
IBM Business Process Manager runs instances of the
BPDs 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.
- If a BPD or subprocess contains a linked process or subprocess that is specified as "Loop Type:
Multi Instance Loop" with "Run In Parallel," users cannot search for tasks by using business data
declared in the BPD or subprocess even if that data is specified as "Visible in Portal".
What to do next
Your
IBM Business Process Manager administrator
can create saved searches to provide
IBM Process
Portal users
with customized views of their tasks.