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Questions answered

  • How to add the business logic to the process?

  • What is process context and how to define it?

  • What is the relationship between UI, task, and human activity?

  • When do I need mapping and how do I do it?

  • What is the relationship between services and events/automated activity?

  • How to build, deploy, and run the process?

  • How to debug a process with the process composer?

Introduction

To make an executable process out of the process you have modeled, you need to add the business logic. What does this mean? The process steps represented by events and activities are still without content. The flow objects need to feed on data.

Process Context

In a process, data is being changed and transported by events and activities. This data is stored in the process context. In the modeling environment of SAP NetWeaver Business Process Management, the process context is represented by a data structure defined in an XSD file. To add the process context and import all the data types needed you import an XSD file. The XSD file defines the data types you assign to data objects. You use data objects to define input and output data, which you map to an activity in the process you model. To track the data changes you need to define the input and output mapping. The process context is the sum of all data objects including the roles information.

More information: Process Context, Creating Data Objects, Defining Data Mappings

Relationship Between Human Activities, Tasks, and User Interfaces

Users execute tasks and therewith trigger a new process step. In a process, these transactions are represented by human activities. A task is assigned to each human activity. To enable a user to perform this task you need a user interface that is assigned to the task. For SAP NetWeaver BPM processes you create user interfaces with Web Dynpro.

More information: Modeling Human Activities, Working with Tasks, Preparing Web Dynpro DC to be used in BPM

Relationship Between Events, Automated Activities, and Services

In process modeling, an event is a flow object that indicates that something happens in the course of the process. An automated activity is a type of flow object in the process that illustrates an activity that the system performs. To make events work, you need to assign a service interface and an operation. You make service interface definitions available either by importing or manually creating them. And you need to define the input or output data mapping to reflect the data changes through the event or automated activity. More information: Modeling Events, Modeling Automated Activities

Prerequisites

Before you can add the business logic to the process and make an executable process out of this process model, you need to perform the following steps:

Activities

To bring all process elements together to a running composite business process as well as execute this process as an end user, follow these steps:

1. Define Presettings for the Process

  1. Click anywhere on the white space of the process diagram to edit the process properties.

  2. On the Properties tab, choose Appearance and select all Level of Detail options.

2. Define Pool Administrators and Dynamic User Texts

  1. Click in the name area of the pool that contains your process model.

  2. On the Properties tab, choose General and ensure that the pool is active. The option Make this pool active (other pools become inactive) needs to be selected.

  3. Choose Administrators and define administrators of the pool.

    More information: Define Pool Administrators

  4. Choose User Texts to enter parameterized texts, which are shown during runtime, for example, in the Process Visualization.

    More information: Defining Pool User Texts, Managing Processes and Tasks with the Process Desk

3. Assign Tasks to Human Activities

If you have not assigned a task to the human activity, you cannot build the process and there is an error marker on the human activity flow object. You can use a Quick Fix, available in the Problems view, to automatically assign a task to the human activity.

More information: Modeling Human Activities, 3. Assign the Task to a Human Activity section.

4. Assign a Web Dynpro UI to Tasks

The interaction between a human and the process is enabled through a user interface (UI). The UI assigned to a task allows the user to access and execute that task.

More information: Assigning a User Interface to a Task

5. Define Task Owners

You can define task owners on task, human activity, and lane level. Defining task owners at a task level applies only to the task. Task owners you define later at lane or human activity level override task owners at task level.

More information: Defining Task Owners

6. Assign Services to Automated Activities

  1. To make service interface definitions available, you need to import or create service interface definitions or WSDL files.

    More information: Importing Service Interface Definitions, Creating Service Interface Definitions

  2. Assign a service interface and an operation to the automated activity.

    More information: Modeling Automated Activities, 3. Assign Service Interface Definitions to Automated Activities section

  3. Create service references for the service interface definitions you have assigned to automated activities.

    More information: Modeling Automated Activities, 4. Create Service References section

7. Assign Services to Events

To make service interface definitions available, you need to import or create service interface definitions or WSDL files.

More information: Importing Service Interface Definitions, Creating Service Interface Definitions

8. Define the Data Types and Assign them to the Data Object

You use data objects to define input and output data, which you map to an activity in the process you model.

An XSD (XML Schema Definition) file defines the structure of the data, which a data object contains. You import an XSD file if you want to set a data type that is different from the primitive ones to a data object.

More information: Creating Data Objects, Importing XSD Files, and Creating and Editing XSD Files

9. Define the Mapping

You define data mappings to show how data used as input and output by the activities and the events in your process is transformed. When you define input mapping, you define how the data transformation between the process context and the input context of an activity or event is done. When you define output mapping, you define how the data transformation between the output context of an activity or event and the process context is done.

More information: Defining Data Mappings

10. Edit the Conditions (Gateways)

In the process modeling phase you have defined gateways of exclusive choice type. Now you need to define when which gate of the gateway will be executed.

  1. In the process diagram, select the gate, for example, the connection from the gateway to the next flow object.

  2. In the gate’s Properties, choose Condition.

11. Build and Deploy the Process

You build and then deploy your process to be able to start it and execute it at runtime. To build your process, you build the development component (DC) that contains your project.

More information: Building and Deploying a Process

12. Start the Process

Processes are exposed as Web service when they are deployed onto the runtime. The Web service definition (WSDL file) and an operation are assigned to the start event in the process composer. When the start event is triggered the process starts.

You have two possibilities to start a process:

  • Starting processes by Web services, for example from the Web Services Navigator or from a Web Dynpro application.

More information: Starting a Process

13. Debug the Process (optional)

Go step-by-step through a running process to locate and analyze errors that occur.

More information: Debugging Processes