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Assigning an Offline Form to a TaskLocate this document in the navigation structure

Use

You can assign an Adobe form as a UI component to a task. The form is sent and submitted back to the process as an e-mail attachment only once by one of the e-mail recipients. Thus, the task is executed offline, because it does not require the user to log into the Universal Worklist to execute the task. To assign the form, you import the form XML schema and template from the deployed Enterprise Content Management (ECM) development component (DC) in the SAP NetWeaver Developer Studio.

Defining Offline Form Recipients

After you have assigned the offline form as a UI component, you have to define the recipients of the offline form. Recipients can be UME users for whom an e-mail is entered in the UME, but you can also send the offline form to an external recipient. You define recipients from UME as potential owners of the task, and external recipients using input mapping. When an external recipient submits back the form, the respective task is completed on behalf of the SAP_BPM_Service user, which is a preconfigured internal user.

Customizing the Offline Form E-Mail Texts

You can customize the subject and the text of the e-mail to which the offline form is attached. You do that by defining user texts for the task to which you assign the offline form. For more information about defining user texts, see Working with Tasks .

If a translation is available, the e-mail can be sent with translated user texts. For external recipients, you define the e-mail language with an input mapping. You define the country in compliance with ISO 3166 and the language in compliance with ISO 639-2. If the recipients of the form are UME users, the language is defined in the UME.

Note

The Adobe offline form sent as an e-mail attachment can be provided in one language only and cannot be translated.

Prefilling Offline Form Fields

You also have the option of prefilling the form fields with data. You can only prefill fields which are bound to elements of the XML schema you used to create the form. Fields bound to the XML schema appear as mapping nodes and you can define input and output mapping for them.

Prerequisites

  • You have opened the Process Development perspective in the Developer Studio and have expanded your project in the Project Explorer view.

  • You have created a task to which you want to assign the offline form.

  • You have stored the XML schema and the XDP file of the offline form in the dedicated ECM DC and have deployed it. For more information, see Designing and Storing an Offline Form .

  • You have assigned the SAP_FPINFRACALLER role to your user. For more information about Business Process Management (BPM) roles, see Authorizations and Roles .

  • You have configured the AS Java in the Developer Studio to be able to browse the XML schema and the XDP file from the ECM DC. For more information, see Configuring the Application Server in the Developer Studio .

Procedure

Assigning an Offline Form to a Task

  1. Expand Process Modeling , then expand Tasks .

  2. In the context menu of a task, choose Open .

    The task editor opens.

  3. Choose the Choose... pushbutton under User Interface on the Overview tab page.

  4. In the dialog that appears, select Offline Technologies (Adobe Forms) and then choose the OK pushbutton.

  5. Choose the Browse... pushbutton to locate the XDP file (form template file) and the XML schema file respectively.

    Log on to the AS Java with your credentials, if prompted, and then expand the BPM node and Forms node to locate the respective files.

  6. Choose the Finish pushbutton.

Defining Offline Form Recipients

You can define the following types of offline form recipients:

  • UME users

    You define this type of recipients as potential owners of the task. For more information, see Defining Task Owners .

    Recommendation

    Define a single principal as a potential owner and respectively a recipient of the offline form, because the offline form can be submitted only once. If you define multiple potential owners, they all can receive and fill in the offline form, but cannot submit it once it has been submitted by another potential owner.

    If you want more than one recipient to submit an offline form, you have to start multiple process instances corresponding to the number of recipients.

  • External recipients

    You define external recipients by entering the necessary e-mail addresses as an input mapping of the task. To do that, you proceed as follows:

    1. Assign the task with the offline form UI component to a human activity in your process.

      For more information, see Modeling Human Activities .

    2. In the Properties view of the human activity, open the Input Mapping tab page.

    3. In the Inputs field, expand Start of the navigation path TaskInput Next navigation step TaskInputExtention Next navigation step EmailDelivery End of the navigation path.

    4. Double-click the email node.

      In the expression editor that opens, enter in double quotation marks ("...") the e-mail address to which you want to send the offline form.

    5. Choose the OK pushbutton.

      For more information about data mappings, see Defining Data Mappings .

    6. (Optional) To define the language of the e-mail sent to external recipients, double-click template_country and template_language and define the country and language in compliance with ISO 3166 and ISO 639-2 respectively. The e-mail text is translated into the respective language if a translation is available.

(Optional) Prefilling Offline Form Fields

You have the option of prefilling data in the offline form using input mapping. To do that, you proceed as follows:

  1. In the Properties view of the human activity, open the Input Mapping tab page.

  2. In the Inputs field, expand Start of the navigation path TaskInput Next navigation step UIRequest End of the navigation path and then expand the nodes that are related to the offline form.

  3. Double-click a node which represents a field in the offline form.

    In the expression editor that opens, enter in double quotation marks ("...") the data you want to prefill the field with.

Note

Optionally, you can use the additional Application Parameters to prefill an offline form with data coming from a previous process step. You use the Application Parameters in the input mapping of the task with an offline form assigned to store the data in the Name and Value nodes. When the form instance is created, the data is stored in the form instance but is not visible in the form layout. The information stays inside the form instance as hidden data. The data can still be used, for example for associating the form to external applications.

When the form is sent back to the process, the data is extracted and propagated to the Name and Value nodes of the task output.

Result

You have assigned an offline form to a task and have defined form recipients. You define how data collected in the form is used in further steps in the process with output mapping from the task to the process context. You can use the additional outputs available for tasks with an offline form as a UI component to pass form-related data to the process, for example the length of the form name, the form in a binary format, and so on.