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About Workflow Process Interactions with Other Siebel Components

In automating your organization's business processes, Siebel Workflow interacts with various components of the Siebel Business architecture.

Siebel Server Components

The Workflow engine interacts with other server components through the Server Request Broker. Working as a business service, the Workflow engine calls server components.

To invoke server components that are exposed as specialized services, the Workflow engine calls them by their respective signature. For example, to send emails, the Workflow engine calls the Communications Server as the Outbound Communications Manager business service. To assign objects to users, it calls the Assignment Manager component as the Synchronous/Asynchronous Assignment Request business service.

To invoke server components that are not exposed as specialized services, the Workflow engine uses the predefined business service called Server Request. The Server Request business service sends a generic request to the Server Request Broker. For more information, see About the Server Requests Business Service.

About the Server Request Broker

The Server Request Broker (SRBroker) acts as a request broker for the Siebel application server. The Workflow engine sends requests to SRBroker, synchronously or asynchronously, and SRBroker brokers the request to the appropriate component. The actions that are involved include:

• Sending asynchronous messages from an interactive server component to the Workflow engine.
• Communication, synchronous and asynchronous, between the Workflow engine and batch components.
• Scheduling repeated tasks that are to be executed periodically in the Workflow engine.

Another job performed by SRBroker is load balancing. When SRBroker receives a request, it routes it to the server component in the current server. For Siebel workflow, if the component is not available in the current server, SRBroker then sends it to other servers on a round robin basis where the Workflow Process Manager component is activated.

Siebel workflow also uses SRBroker to resume a waiting workflow process. SRBroker pools a database table on a regular basis to see server tasks that must be resumed.

For more information about synchronous and asynchronous invocation of a workflow process, see About the Server Requests Business Service. For more information about SRBroker, see Siebel System Administration Guide.

Personalization Engine

The Personalization engine handles run-time events, such as application events, applet events, and business component events. It is through integration with the Personalization engine that Siebel workflow handles run-time events. A workflow process triggered or resumed by run-time events registers itself with the Personalization engine at the time of the process's activation. When a run-time event occurs in a user session, the Personalization engine calls Workflow in the local object manager.

Inbox

Inbox is a single screen in Siebel Business Applications that displays approval and notification items and tasks assigned users regardless of the screen where the item originated. Inbox displays enough detailed information about the item so that users can act on the item from the Inbox and not have to navigate to other screens. For more information about the Inbox, see Siebel Applications Administration Guide.

Tasks

Siebel Task UI allows you to create a user interface that is similar to a wizard, with multiple step, interactive operations that can include branching and decision logic to guide users through task execution. Task UI allows navigation both backward and forward within task execution, and allows task execution to be paused and resumed as needed. You can integrate tasks in a workflow process by including Task steps.

For more information, see Siebel Business Process Framework: Task UI Guide.