Making variables available for Process Portal searches

You can enable process participants in IBM® Process Portal to search for particular business data across process instances.

Procedure

  1. In Process Designer, open the BPD that includes the variables that you want to configure.
  2. Click the Variables tab.
  3. For each variable whose runtime values you want to search, select the Available in Search check box in the Business Data Search section. For complex variables, be sure to select the check box for each parameter you want to search.
  4. In the Search Alias text box, type a name for the variable. This is the name to use when performing searches in IBM Process Portal.
    Note: If a variable is shared by multiple BPDs (for example, a parent process and its nested 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.
  5. Save your changes by click the Save icon.

Results

Now when IBM Business Process Manager runs instances of the BPDs that contain the configured variables, you can search for process instances that include these variables in IBM Process Portal.

What to do next

For IBM Business Process Manager V7.5.1.1 and later 7.5.1.x versions, setting the <use-business-aliases-for-process-instances> property to true in the 100Custom.xml file limits the set of business data field names that are displayed in the Process Portal saved search field name menu to field names that are used in actual process instances on the server. If you do not set the property to true, all fields that are defined in the deployed process application snapshots (that are configured with the Available in Search check box in Process Designer) are displayed. To modify the 100Custom.xml file, see Changing IBM Process Server properties. For example, you would add the following property:
<portal>
    [Other properties, if <portal> section already exists]
    <use-business-aliases-for-process-instances>true</use-business-aliases-for-process-instances>
</portal>