IBM BPM Tips Q&A - Recent questions and answers in BPD

How to find an artifact with artifact ID in the Process DB tables ?

Mon, 11 Oct 2021 08:59:38 +0000

Hi All,

I have few validation errors saying Artifact is unreachable but im unable to locate it in the BPD that it is showing. Also im not able to get the artifact details by the the artifact ID in any tables in the Product DB. Need some help to solve these kind of errors

Error:

<pov:validation-err type="3" messageId="com.lombardisoftware.server.ejb.persistence.versioning.MutableSnapshotContextImpl.DEPENDENCY_NOT_REACHABLE" message="Artifact is unreachable: [artifactRef:a1231b-6b17-4056-aaba-26af12312336d]. Make sure it exists in the process application or toolkit. If it exists in another toolkit, ensure that the toolkit is included in the dependency."

Answered: What is a multi-instance loop and what are the various ways of implementing it in IBM BPM?

Sat, 04 Apr 2020 17:29:53 +0000

https://youtu.be/3aohhgcQR9I

Answered: what is difference between epv and env?

Fri, 03 Apr 2020 20:28:03 +0000

https://youtu.be/pVk5sIHW_SM

What is BPD Ref ID and how is it useful?

Mon, 30 Mar 2020 13:47:23 +0000

Answered: what is difference between group and team?

Wed, 19 Jun 2019 12:06:29 +0000

The Team Filter Service can be executed on per task assignment basis with parameters supplied that are specific to that specific instance of the process. For example, if I want to assign a task based on the language spoken by the customer, I would choose the potential owners of that task with a team filter service located at the point where the task is created

what is shared business object?

Wed, 15 May 2019 03:30:25 +0000

What is difference between inline User Task and User Task in 8.6 version ?

Mon, 11 Feb 2019 21:07:45 +0000

Answered: What is work schedule for a Process how does it affect processing of Human and System Tasks?

Thu, 13 Dec 2018 14:33:33 +0000

he work schedule determines the number of working hours that business users are available to complete work and therefore directly affects the due date work schedule of process instances and activities.

https://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/en/SSFPJS_8.6.0/com.ibm.wbpm.wle.editor.doc/topics/setting_bpd_work_schedule.html

Answered: Is it possible to inject a new token into a active Process Instance ?

Tue, 11 Dec 2018 13:43:37 +0000

This is not documented but a servlet exists to inject a token the syntax is as follows

https://[hostname]:[port]/portal/jsp/inject?bpdInstanceId=[INSTANCE_ID]&action=i&flowObjId=[OBJECT_ID]

this will inject a new token at the specified Flow Object ID

Answered: How can we complete a active task using JSAPI ?

Tue, 11 Dec 2018 13:38:07 +0000

Its done with the following JS API syntax, user is the TWuser to complete the task as and outputValiues is a map of task return objects.

tw.system.findTaskByID("1234").complete(user, outputValues)

Answered: what is difference between process and bpd

Sat, 17 Nov 2018 20:58:20 +0000

Simulation and optimization are only available for BPDs. P.S. WebPD does not have Optimizer Tab and hence doe not make any sense to have this Process.

BPDs and processes have the same underlying definition and the two are the same at run time.

Answered: What is a dynamic Sub-Process/Linked Process?

Sat, 20 Oct 2018 15:49:51 +0000

https://bpm.tips/160/can-we-attach-a-child-process-at-run-time-in-a-generic-manner-e-g-from-database-metadata?show=444#a444

Answered: why we are using api to trigger BPD instead of UCA?

Sat, 20 Oct 2018 15:06:36 +0000

UCAs are prone to errors and put load on the event manager especially if we are launching bulk instances, launching from API alleaviates this problem to some extent also it is desirable sometimes to have the instance id in the calling service UCA invocation does not provide the launched instances id but the API call returns the instance ID

Answered: Can you please explain with scenario how ENV variables used ?

Sat, 20 Oct 2018 15:03:10 +0000

One scenario will be you have a SOAP integration and the hostname part changes from environment to environment e.g DEV, TEST, STAGING and PRODUCTION but the context root and remaining url parameter is same. You can leverage an ENV variable in this case to predefine the hostname for all environments and then you can deploy the process app without any changes and as per the runtime deifinition the appropriate URL will be constructed

Answered: what is shared business object?

Wed, 13 Jun 2018 11:49:58 +0000

A shared business object is nothing but a business object only, which will create a single instance for the BPD.
It is similar like a Static variable in Java which is having a single instance throughout the whole programs.

For e.g. If you are changing the value of a shared object the changes will reflect to all the activities available in a BPD where ever you have used that object.

Answered: what is diffrence between triggering BPD using API and UCA?

Mon, 04 Jun 2018 05:23:43 +0000

Ideally, the end result will be the same. if successfully launched, a new process instance of the BPD will be created.

the difference comes in the internal workings of the BPM product itself.

If you use API ( Server side JS API, WebAPI, REST API) you are intiating communication through a specific protocol and method, and it will differ if you use UCA ( which is more design and event/message oriented )

what is your current usecase?

Answered: How do we invoke a start message event from one process application to another?

Fri, 16 Feb 2018 21:32:00 +0000

It can be done by using a shared UCA and attached service inside a toolkit and using the toolkit in both process applications, in one to attach to start message event of BPD and in second one to trigger the UCA to launch the process.

Answered: What are the BPD design guidelines?

Wed, 29 Jun 2016 19:25:35 +0000

1. If the Process is medium sized or large, you should try to create a multi-layered structure for your BPDs with linked Processes
or Sub-Processes
2. The Highest level BPD should be as much abstracted as possible, and simple and clear to understand, stay away from spagetthi Processes
3. For large Processes functionality based groupings into sub-processes should be done
4. Business User Swim lanes should be one per Team/Participant Group
5. You can use multiple system swimlanes to place the system activities near the business activities, for better readability.
6. Separate your Business Data from process data.
7. You can use two primary Context Wrappers (Business and Process) at the top level BPDs to minimize the changes to BPD as the model evolves
8. The Name of the activity should be appropriate to its function.
9. You can use sticky notes next to activities to further define the functionality and purpose of the activity.
10. A well designed BPD approach is to clearly identify the Happy path first and then plot the Exception Paths in context of the Happy Path.
11. If you are the architect use the documentation for each acitivity to provide implementation directions.
If you are the developer update the documentation to facilitate easy maintenance and enhancements.
12. Recommended number of maximum activities in a Process diagram is 10, same goes for service diagrams also.
13. All lines in a BPD should be straight, You can use Ctrl + Arrow Keys to make perfect straight lines.
14. You can optionally create a color scheme for your activities e.g. All Human Services/Tasks in yellow, System activities in Gray etc. with a color legend placed as a sticky note.
15. Example of Process Context Variables are
    1. Instance ID
    2. Activity Subject
    3. Due Dates
    etc.
16. You need not move all decision gateways to system lane, I have seen someone do that the resulting diagram was a mess. Argument being gateways are system activities.

Please feel free to add to this list or let us know if you have a different concept.

Answered: How can we create a metric to define BPD complexity, is it by number of steps, number of paths or number of parallel tokens, can we use process simulator to determine BPD complexity?

Tue, 28 Jun 2016 11:11:05 +0000

This is part of what Neches (http://neches.bp-3cloud.com) does when it analyzes the overall complexity of your solution. It calculates this score for both BPDs and Services. The right way to do this IMO, is based off of graph theory using control flow complexity to calculate the answer. You can read more about how to do this here - http://eden.dei.uc.pt/~jcardoso/Research/Papers/JA-2008-017-JWSR-Business-Process-Control-Flow-Complexity-proof.pdf

Note that this represents only 2 of over 20 rules Neches uses to attempt to assess the overall complexity of your solution.

Answered: What are the various reasons due to which a BPD will fail to start?

Fri, 17 Jun 2016 22:52:10 +0000

I have seen BPDs failing to start due to

not mapped required input variables,
null pointers in variables bound to task attributes e.g. subject, due date etc.
exposed business data which is first exposed and then unexposed
references to undefined variables

What is general Synchronizing merge pattern and how can it be implemented in IBM BPM ?

Tue, 14 Jun 2016 18:13:28 +0000

What is Local Synchronizing Merge Pattern and how can it be implemented in IBM BPM ?

Tue, 14 Jun 2016 18:11:10 +0000

Answered: Can someone provide an example of publishing a JMS and HTTP message to Event Listener to start a process?

Thu, 09 Jun 2016 06:31:18 +0000

Can you please have a look at below reference ?

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/bpm/library/techarticles/1207_chandra/1207_chandra.html

It is having all details information on how to invoke UCA by publishing message to event queue.

Answered: How can we implement locking/unlocking of tasks ?

Mon, 06 Jun 2016 12:51:35 +0000

You can implement locking and unlocking using the custom table with column lock with true or false. For example if user1 claim the task then you have insert true to column. if another user claim the same task then you have to again query the same table and see if true then show task claim by other user else open the task.

Answered: Since teamworks days there has been a BPD Injection Recovery Pattern (Rescue Services) defined, is it theory only or someone has used it in practice, can a reference example be built?

Mon, 06 Jun 2016 10:38:52 +0000

BPD Injection Recovery Pattern is used to create a recovery mechanism for your BPDs in case a javascript or some other error happens and which can be resolved by correcting the input data to your tasks, we design an additional UCA based launch which takes the updated data (in XMl format) from the user through a Recovery console (Human Service) and the step at which to inject the data at, thus a new instance is created with the same set of data inputs as the original process instancess except for the corrected data elements.

You can retrieve the original data from Process Inspector or through REST API and update it so that the previous error will not happen and resurrect the BPD at the specific step it failed.

Here is the download for a working sample you can use it as a template https://bpm.tips/?qa=blob&qa_blobid=2775505746467741826

Answered: What is Line Condition in a BPD Activity and why dont people use it and use decision gateways instead ?

Sun, 22 May 2016 09:57:37 +0000

https://youtu.be/FiQTPXkrh8A

line conditions are available on a line Behavior section when you have one or more lines coming out of a single activity, like a decision gateway. In the following diagram Line 1 and Line 2 are branching out of Step 2

Line 1 is default and L2 needs a condition to be satisfied on the other hand in a decision gateway approach

we use a exclusive decision gateway to do the same, if more than one line evaluates to true a split happens, in case of a simple BPD where we want a exclusive scenario decision gateways are used in place of line conditions because the order in which the line conditions evaluate is not guaranteed, but I have seen line conditions for splits in multiple projects. If any other line besides default evaluates to true default path is not taken but if besides default line there are two or more that two lines evaluating to true process takes all the paths and multiple parallel tokens are created.

Answered: What is generally accepted color coding scheme of BPDS ?

Sun, 22 May 2016 09:30:28 +0000

Not sure about generally accepted but have been familiarized with this theme since Lombardi Teamworks

1. Human Services - Green
2. System Services - Grey
3. Support Swim Lane - Default
4. Data Entry Swimlane - Green
5. Approvers Swimlane - Red
6. Reviewers Swimlane - yellow
7. Notifications - blue

But its a personal choice and you can put a legend comment box about the color scheme you are using

Answered: How can we start a BPD with scheduled timer ?

Fri, 20 May 2016 22:05:42 +0000

You can bind the start message event to a UCA which is of "Time Elapsed" type and set the schedule there.

Answered: What are all the execution statuses of a BPD Instance?

Thu, 19 May 2016 11:48:09 +0000

The execution status of the Process instances are based on the different phases that an instance can undergo during the execution life cycle. These execution status are maintained by the Process Server in the Process Server Database. When the BPD instanc table is queried, it will return the status as integer values.

1 - The Process instance is currently active 
2 - The Process instance has completed or Finished 
3 - The Process instance has failed due error in execution
4 - The Process instance has been terminated(abort) 
5 - The Process instance could not Start 
8 - The Process instance was suspended

The above were the corresponding status to the Integer values.

Answered: Whas is the difference between a sync queue and a async queue in IBM BPM?

Tue, 17 May 2016 21:10:48 +0000

These are two types of Event Manager queues, Asynchronous (async) and Synchronous (sync). Async queues are executed as soon as possible with no guaranteed order. Sync queues are executed serially. If you have multiple tasks set to run on one sync queue they will execute one after the other in the order that they were put in to thee sync queue. The EM treats sync and async queues differently.

In Sync Queue each task in a sync queue must be executed in serial. To prevent problems in a cluster, an EM will claim ownership of one or more sync queues when it starts up. The ownership is stored in the LSW_UCA_SYNC_QUEUE where QUEUE_OWNER is linked to OWNER_ID in LSW_EM_INSTANCE. This is not a permanent assignment. The LSW_EM_INSTANCE table keeps track of status of all of the event managers. The status is checked every 15 seconds by default. If the owner of a sync queue is no longer available another EM will take ownership of that sync queue.

In Async Queue tasks are picked up by each EM when there is room in their async queue for more tasks. Each process server has it’s own running EM. The EM is configured by each process server’s copy of 80EventManager.xml: There are various EM settings in that xml file and they are all specified in milliseconds.

How can we use ANY object type in a generic manner to handle unknown types and reduce out BO size?

Tue, 17 May 2016 01:33:41 +0000

How can we find out the bpd id/artifact id for a event gateway etc for migration purposes?

Mon, 16 May 2016 23:59:39 +0000