Enabling resumable services

To enable resumable dashboards for a process application, you must configure the com.ibm.bpm.social.zResumable property.

About this task

When an exposed heritage human service is invoked, the service instance and associated data remains in the Process Portal user's session memory until one of the following conditions occurs: the heritage human service ends, the Process Portal user logs out, or the session times out due to inactivity.

If the Process Portal user navigates away from a heritage human service Coach, the service instance remains in the user's session. Sessions are held in IBM® Business Process Manager server memory, which might result in large memory allocations if many service instances accumulate. Therefore, consider the various service types and the service lifecycle when authoring and exposing a heritage human service.

Non-resumable services

By default, services are not resumable. A new service instance is created each time the service is invoked. If the service does not flow to an end node, each instance remains in the Process Portal user's session (until logout or session timeout), which can potentially utilize a large amount of server memory per user. Therefore, services should typically flow to an end node so that the service is removed from the Process Portal user's session immediately.

Startable services that are called from the Process Portal Launch list and administrative services that are called from the Process Admin Console are not resumable.

Resumable services

Services can be called as resumable (called with zResumable=true). When a service is resumable, a service instance is reused if a previously created service instance is still available in the Process Portal user’s session. The service state and any service variables set from the prior instance invocation are still in session memory and are used. If the service does not flow to an end node, one instance remains in the session and is available for reuse (until logout or session timeout). If the dashboard service flows to an end node, the service instance is removed from the session, and the next time the service is resumed, the Process Portal user is prompted to restart the service. Resumable services are often authored so that they do not end, which allows Process Portal users to continue where they were when they logged out.

Dashboard Services called from Process Portal can be configured to be resumable (called with zResumable=true).

Note: Only services invoked in a snapshot can be resumed. When invoking a service in a tip, the service is never resumed, which supports iterative development scenarios on Process Center.

Procedure

To enable resumable dashboards for a process application, you must configure the com.ibm.bpm.social.zResumable property:

Open the administrative console and click Resources > Resource Environment > Resource Environment Provider > Mashups_ConfigService > Custom properties.
Create a property named com.ibm.bpm.social.zResumable and set its value to be a list of process application IDs, for example: TRD,RD,MAILCOM.
Save your changes
Restart the server.
Important: Do not add the Process Portal (TWP) process application to the com.ibm.bpm.social.zResumable list. The dashboards delivered in the Process Portal application are not designed to be resumable.
Invoke resumable services by using the following URL: http://host_name:port/contextRootPrefix/executeServiceByName?processApp=acronym&serviceName=MyService. The default value for the contextRootPrefix is teamworks. For more information about how to configure a custom context root, see the section for the -update parameter in the BPMConfig command-line utility topic.
In addition to the standard service URL parameters, you can use the following resumable parameters:
zResumable=true

This parameter causes the user's dashboard session to be resumed. It is appended by default to all dashboard URLs. The resumable instances are stored per user session, so different users have different instances. When a user logs out, all resumable instances are cleared. The parameter can be used with the optional zClientHandle={key} parameter. If the process application for the dashboard is added to the com.ibm.bpm.social.zResumable list, dashboard services called from Process Portal are automatically called with zResumable=true.

zForceNew=true

If you use the URL to launch the dashboard as part of an application that runs outside of Process Portal, you can use this parameter to override the zResumable=true parameter so that a new dashboard instance results. If you use this parameter, you must ensure that services are terminated, for example, by modeling an end event in the service, or by calling an API to complete or terminate the service.

[zClientHandle={key}]

If you use the URL to launch the dashboard as part of an application that runs outside of Process Portal, you can use this optional parameter with the zResumable=true parameter. With these parameters, you can use a client-side key as a reference to resume and reference multiple dashboard instances.

For information about HTTP session settings including session timeout intervals, see Session management settings in the IBM WebSphere® Application Server documentation.