Creating and configuring an undercover agent for a content event

To obtain information about document or folder events on an Enterprise Content Management (ECM) server, you must create and configure a content undercover agent that works with your event subscription. A content undercover agent (UCA) is used to initiate a BPM Start or Intermediate event when specific content changes occur on an ECM server. It is conceptually similar to a message undercover agent, but it has a specialized Content marker to differentiate it from a Message marker.

Before you begin

To perform this task, you must be in the IBM® Process Designer desktop editor.

The following procedure describes how to create a content undercover agent without consideration for some of the other components that are required to detect and respond to ECM events, such as an event subscription. If you need to create a content undercover agent and all of the other required components as well, you should follow the instructions in the topic Subscribing to document and folder events: the end-to-end approach. This end-to-end approach is a simpler approach than creating each component on a stand-alone basis. It automatically creates some resources that you would otherwise need to create manually.

Procedure

  1. Open the Process Designer desktop editor.
  2. Open a process application in the Designer view.
  3. Create a content undercover agent by completing the following steps:
    1. Click the plus (+) icon beside Implementation and then select Undercover Agent. The New Undercover Agent wizard opens.
    2. In the Name field, specify a name for the new undercover agent.
    3. In the Schedule Type drop-down list, select On Event.
    4. Click Finish. The undercover agent opens in the undercover agent editor.
  4. Configure the content undercover agent by completing the following steps in the undercover agent editor:
    1. Beside the Event Marker area, click Select and then select Content. (Use the Content selection to work with content events that originate from ECM servers. By comparison, the Message selection is used to work with message events that originate from BPDs, JMS listeners, or web services that you have created.)
    2. Beside the Implementation area, accept the default selection Variable or select Service (if necessary). Use a variable implementation to pass events directly from the undercover agent to the business process definition (BPD). By comparison, use a service implementation to process information about events by adding business logic or decisions.
    3. If you accepted Variable as your implementation, the default variable type ECMContentEvent is used and it cannot be changed.
    4. If you selected Service as your implementation, the default attached service Default ECM Event is already selected. However, you can click Select beside the Attached Service area and choose a different attached service for the undercover agent.
    5. Ensure that the Enabled check box is selected, which enables the content undercover agent to run.
    6. In the Parameter Mapping section, select the Use Default check box if you want to use the default value of the input variable in the attached service. If the input variable of the attached service does not have a default value, this check box is disabled. You can type a value in the field to manually map a constant value to the input variable of the attached service. For example, you might use a constant for testing purposes.
    7. Click Save.
    8. If you accepted the Content event marker and you need to create an event subscription for the undercover agent, click Add Event Subscription and follow the instructions in the topic Creating and configuring event subscriptions.
    9. After you have configured and saved the content undercover agent, you can click Run Now to test the content undercover agent and monitor it as described in Maintaining and monitoring IBM Business Process Manager Event Manager.

Results

The new configured content undercover agent is displayed in the Undercover Agents section of the Implementation library list.