Implementing Role Consolidation 

Use

After you design and create a composite activity (a block or a process), you may need to add, rename or consolidate roles. Roles are used to define processors for the different activities:

●      The IGPAction activity has a single default role.

The default role of an action is created by adding the action to a block structure. Its name is the action’s technical name. This role is accessible through IGPModifiableBlockStructureItem.getActionRole().

●      The IGPBlock and IGPProcess activities have a collection of roles.

If not modified, the block roles are the union of all the roles of its children. When adding a new child to the block, its roles are copied automatically to the parent.

The role information is accessed and modified through the IGPModifiableRoleInfo interface.

Prerequisites

●      You have instantiated the IGPDesigntimeUpdateManager.

See Instantiating the Design Time Manager.

●      You have created a block or a process containing child activities.

See Creating GP Development Objects.

Procedure

Adding New Roles

In addition to the roles copied from the child activities to the parent block, you can create more block roles through the IGPModifiableBlock interface:

Adding New Roles to a Block

import com.sap.caf.eu.gp.process.api.IGPModifiableBlock;   // add role “Block role 1” with technical name “role1” block.addRole("role1", "Block Role 1"); // add role “Block role 2” with technical name “role2” block.addRole("role2", "Block Role 2"); // remove role “Block role 1” block.removeRole("role1");

The technical name should not contain white spaces and should be no longer than 32 characters. It is unique amongst all the roles that have already been defined for the block.

 

By analogy, additional process roles can be created or removed through the IGPModifiableProcess interface. For these roles, you also have to specify one of the following role types:

●      ROLE_TYPE_INITIATION_DEFINED – the role is filled during the initiation with user-dependent data

●      ROLE_TYPE_INITIATOR – the role is filled with the initiator data

●      ROLE_TYPE_RT_DEFINED – the role is undefined during design time; it is filled at runtime by a specific action

Adding New Roles to a Process

import com.sap.caf.eu.gp.process.api.IGPModifiableProcess; import com.sap.caf.eu.gp.process.api.GPRoleType;   // add role “Processor” of type Initiator process.addRole("processor", "Processor", GPRoleType.ROLE_TYPE_INITIATOR); // add role “Advisor” of type Runtime Defined process.addRole("advisor", "Advisor", GPRoleType.ROLE_TYPE_RT_DEFINED); // add role “Processor” of type Initiation Defined process.addRole("employee", "Employee", GPRoleType.ROLE_TYPE_INITIATION_DEFINED);

 

Modifying Existing Roles

You can modify the roles you have created and all other existing roles by changing their properties.

In addition to the roles that processes inherit from their child activities, there are three more automatically created built-in roles, which cannot be removed:

●    Administrator

●    Owner

●    Overseer

Modifying Roles

import com.sap.caf.eu.gp.process.api.IGPModifiableProcess; import com.sap.caf.eu.gp.process.api.IGPModifiableBlock; import com.sap.caf.eu.gp.process.api.IGPModifiableRoleInfo; import com.sap.caf.eu.gp.process.api.GPRoleType;   // modify description of block role “Advisor” IGPModifiableRoleInfo blockRole = block.getRole("advisor").setText("New Advisor");   // change type of built-in process role “Overseer” IGPModifiableRoleInfo processRole = process.getModifiableOverseerRole().setRoleType(GPRoleType. ROLE_TYPE_INITIATOR);

 

Consolidating Roles

You can define mappings from child roles to parent roles to consolidate the processors of the parent activity. This is possible through the IGPRoleMap interface, which holds information about block role mappings. For each mapping (IGPRoleMapping) you need to specify:

●      The role of the child activity that has to be consolidated

●      The corresponding item Id of the child activity in the block structure of the parent activity

●      A role in the parent activity

The example below maps the default roles of two child actions to a single block role, thus consolidating the roles.

Mapping Roles

import com.sap.caf.eu.gp.process.api.IGPModifiableBlock; import com.sap.caf.eu.gp.process.api.IGPRoleMapping;   // map role of action_1 to block role “processor” IGPRoleMapping mapping_1 = block.getRoleMap().mapRole(block.getRole("action_1"), block.getModifiableStructure().getItem(0).getID(), block.getRole("processor"));   // map role of action_2 to block role “processor” IGPRoleMapping mapping_2 = block.getRoleMap().mapRole(block.getRole("action_2"), block.getModifiableStructure().getItem(1).getID(), block.getRole("processor"));

 

You can also view available mappings or remove them if you no longer need them:

Retrieving and Removing Role Mappings

import com.sap.caf.eu.gp.process.api.IGPModifiableBlock; import com.sap.caf.eu.gp.process.api.IGPRoleMapping; import java.util.Iterator;   // remove “mapping_1” created previously block.getRoleMap().unmapRole(mapping_1);   // view all available role mappings for a block Iterator listAll = block.getRoleMap().getRoleMappings();   // view available mappings for a given parent role in a block Iterator listRole = block.getRoleMap().getRoleMappings("processor");