Before business users in IBM® Process
Portal can
search for business data across process instances, you need to configure
each variable in the Process Designer to
be available to search. In addition, the business data about a task
that business users see in their task list needs to made available
to search in order to be viewable in the task list.
About this task
As you model the business data for your process application,
consider what type of data a business user might want to search on
while working with the process. You also should 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
- In Process Designer,
open the 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 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 make available.
Note: Only process level variables
can be made available as business data for searches, but not variables
defined, for example, inside human services.
- 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. This is also the name that is seen by users in Process Portal
when they are viewing the data related to tasks in their task list.
If you use camel case, a mix of upper and lower case letters to indicate
word boundaries, the label for the variable will be 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 that include these variables in
IBM Process
Portal.
The variables that have been made available to search are also viewable
to business users viewing the associated task in their task list.
Note: If
a BPD or subprocess contains a linked process or subprocess that has
been specified as "Loop Type: Multi Instance Loop" with "Run In Parallel,"
users cannot search for tasks using business data declared in the
BPD or subprocess even if that data has been specified as "Available
in Search".
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.