How do BAW processes become skills for watsonx Orchestrate and AI agents (skills catalog, OpenAPI, Model Context Protocol)?

Question

Our company is rolling out watsonx Orchestrate as the employee assistant. How can users start BAW processes and complete tasks from the assistant, what has to be configured on the CP4BA side, and where do AI agents and MCP fit in?

Answer 1

Three integration levels, from simplest to most flexible:

1. CP4BA as a skill source: in watsonx Orchestrate, connect the Cloud Pak (on-premises or as a service) as an application; Orchestrate discovers the automations exposed in Workflow - startable processes and service flows with their input and output data - and adds them to the skills catalog. A user then types "start an expense claim for 120 EUR" and the assistant collects the inputs and starts the process under the user's identity; task-related skills let users list and complete their tasks from the assistant.
2. Custom skills from OpenAPI: any REST API of the platform (Process REST v2, your own gateway in front of a service flow) can be imported as a custom skill from its OpenAPI document - useful when you want a curated, business-named API instead of raw process names.
3. Agents with tools (Model Context Protocol): the newest BAW releases expose workflow capabilities as tools that AI agents (watsonx Orchestrate agents and others) call through MCP - the agent decides when to start a process, fetch instance status or complete a task, based on the conversation; the human stays in the loop through BAW tasks.

# preparing a process for the skills catalog
# - expose the BPD "Expense claim" as startable to the right team; give input variables business names and documentation
#   (expenseAmount (Decimal) "Amount in EUR", expenseType (String) "Travel, Meal or Other") - the assistant shows these texts to users
# - keep the input flat and small: a skill with 4 fields is usable in a chat, one with a 30-field business object is not
# - return meaningful outputs (claim number, next step) so that the assistant can confirm

# custom skill alternative: an OpenAPI document for your gateway route to the service flow
openapi: 3.0.0
paths:
  /expenses/claims:
    post:
      summary: Start an expense claim
      requestBody: { content: { application/json: { schema: { type: object, properties: { amount: {type: number}, type: {type: string, enum: [Travel, Meal, Other]} } } } } }
      responses: { "200": { description: Claim created, content: { application/json: { schema: { type: object, properties: { claimNumber: {type: string} } } } } } }

Configuration on the CP4BA side: the connection uses the Zen identity (an API key of a service user or the user's own single sign-on, depending on the deployment), the Workflow endpoints must be reachable from Orchestrate (route / network policy), and the users must exist in both systems (same LDAP). Governance: a skill that starts a process is an action - keep confirmation steps in the assistant for anything with financial impact, and let the process's own tasks do the approvals.

References

• IBM watsonx Orchestrate
• CP4BA documentation - integrating with watsonx Orchestrate
• What is new in BAW 25.x
• BAW Workflow REST API