| Oracle® Fusion Applications Extensibility Guide for Business Analysts 11g Release 7 (11.1.7) Part Number E16691-12 |
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PDF · Mobi · ePub |
| Oracle® Fusion Applications Extensibility Guide for Business Analysts 11g Release 7 (11.1.7) Part Number E16691-12 |
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|
PDF · Mobi · ePub |
This chapter describes how to use Oracle Business Process Composer (Business Process Composer)to customize and extend Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN) processes. Several Oracle Fusion applications use BPMN processes to define process flows within the application. This chapter also describes how to edit BPMN processes by creating and modifying BPM projects based on project templates and deploying those projects at runtime.
Note:
The Business Process Composer and Oracle Business Process Management Studio functionality described in this chapter is not available in Oracle Cloud implementations of Oracle Fusion Human Capital Management.
This chapter includes the following sections:
The Oracle Fusion CRM Application Composer (Application Composer) and Oracle Fusion Human Capital Management product families of Oracle Fusion Applications use Business Process Management Notation (BPMN) processes to define some of the process flows used within their applications.
BPMN is a standard notation for modeling the behavior of business processes. It enables process analysts to create graphical models of a business process. Oracle Business Process Management Suite provides an environment for implementing BPMN processes by enabling process developers to integrate them with other systems and services. Oracle BPM Suite also provides a runtime environment for integrating the running processes within Oracle Fusion Applications. For general information about BPMN, see the "Modeling and Testing Business Processes" part in the Oracle Fusion Middleware Business Process Composer User's Guide for Oracle Business Process Management.
Business Process Composer enables you to customize the BPMN processes used within Application Composer and Oracle Fusion Human Capital Management. To customize these processes you must create, modify, and deploy Oracle BPM projects created from a project template. BPMN processes are contained within a BPM project. BPM projects contain all of the resources required for a functioning BPM application, including BPMN processes and Service Oriented Architecture artifacts such a business rule or human task.
Oracle Fusion applications provide default project templates that you can use to create new process flows. See the product-specific documentation in Oracle Fusion Applications Help for more information about the default BPM project templates provided by Oracle Fusion Applications.
For general information about working with project templates, see the "Working with BPM Projects" section in the Oracle Fusion Middleware Business Process Composer User's Guide for Oracle Business Process Management.
A BPM project template is prepopulated with all of the required resources for implementing BPMN processes within an Oracle Fusion application. This includes the BPMN processes that define the process flow as well as the necessary implementation details that enable the processes to communicate with other parts of the application.
After customizing a BPM project, you can deploy it to runtime in one of several ways. See Section 6.5, "Deploying a BPM Project" for more information.
The reusable elements contained within a BPM project are called the business catalog. The business catalog contains different reusable services that a BPMN process can use to connect to other components of the application, including other processes, systems, and databases.
Table 6-1 lists the reusable components of the business catalog.
Table 6-1 Business Catalog Components Available in Business Process Composer
| Business Catalog Component | Description |
|---|---|
|
Services |
Use services to connect a BPMN process with other processes, systems, and services, including a BPEL process, and databases. See the "Working with Services" section in the Oracle Fusion Middleware Business Process Composer User's Guide for Oracle Business Process Management for more information. |
|
Human tasks |
Human tasks enable you to define how end users interact with your BPMN processes. Human tasks are implemented in a BPMN process using the user task. See the "Working with Human Tasks" chapter in the Oracle Fusion Middleware Business Process Composer User's Guide for Oracle Business Process Management. |
|
Business rules |
Oracle business rules are statements that describe business policies or describe key business decisions. See the "Using Oracle Business Rules" chapter in the Oracle Fusion Middleware Business Process Composer User's Guide for Oracle Business Process Management for information on implementing business rules within a BPMN process. |
Oracle Fusion applications provide multiple tools for customizing and extending BPMN processes. These tools are described in Table 6-2.
Table 6-2 Oracle Tools for Customizing and Extending BPMN Processes
| This tool... | Enables you to... |
|---|---|
|
Business Process Composer |
Customize BPMN processes by creating and deploying BPM projects based on project templates. This functionality is described in the current chapter. |
|
Oracle BPM Studio (Oracle JDeveloper) |
Customize project templates. See the "Customizing and Extending Oracle BPM Project Templates" chapter in the Oracle Fusion Applications Extensibility Guide for Developers. |
|
Oracle SOA Composer |
Customize a business rule, domain value map, or approval configuration and assignment rules at runtime. See the "Customizing SOA Composite Applications" section in the Oracle Fusion Applications Extensibility Guide for Developers for more information. These customizations are performed directly on a running application. They do not require redeployment of the BPM project containing the BPMN process. |
|
Oracle BPM Worklist |
Customize approval configuration and assignment rules. See the "Customizing SOA Composite Applications" section in the Oracle Fusion Applications Extensibility Guide for Developers for more information. These customizations are performed directly on a running application. They do not require redeployment of the BPM project containing the BPMN process. |
There are two types of runtime customization that you can make to BPMN processes. These are described in the following sections.
BPMN processes use multiple SOA components, including business rules and approval workflow. Using Oracle SOA Composer and Oracle BPM Worklist, you can customize the following components used by the BPMN processes of a running Oracle Fusion application:
Oracle business rules
Domain value maps
Approval assignment rules in human workflows such as customizing the approval flow for a specific customer
These customizations can be made directly to a running Oracle Fusion application without having to redeploy the BPM project. See the "Customizing SOA Composite Applications" section in the Oracle Fusion Applications Extensibility Guide for Developers for information about using Oracle SOA Composer or Oracle BPM Worklist to make these customizations.
Note:
Any changes you make to the deployed, running BPMN processes of an Oracle Fusion Customer Relationship Management application will not be preserved if you later redeploy the BPM project that contains them.
Using Business Process Composer, you can make the following customizations to a BPM project created from a project template:
Customize an existing BPMN process.
Create new BPMN processes.
Create simple data objects.
Create and modify some business catalog components.
Table 6-3 lists which business catalog components can be customized or created using Business Process Composer.
Table 6-3 List of Business Catalog Components
| Business Catalog Component | Can be created using Business Process Composer? | Can be customized using Business Process Composer? |
|---|---|---|
|
Business rules |
Yes |
Yes |
|
Human tasks |
Yes You can create human tasks using Business Process Composer, however not all functionality of a human task can be customized. |
Yes |
|
Services |
Yes |
Yes |
See Section 6.2, "Creating a BPM Project" for information about creating a new BPM project based on a project template.
Changes to the business catalog that cannot be made using Business Process Composer must be made to the project template using Oracle BPM Studio. See Section 6.1.3, "What You Cannot Do with BPMN Processes at Runtime" for more information.
Often, it is necessary to make changes to a BPMN process that cannot be performed using Business Process Composer. The following tasks must be performed using JDeveloper:
Modify project templates.
Create or customize some business catalog components, including:
Configuring advanced properties of web services
Creating new adapters and mediators
Creating or customizing error messages
Configuring advanced features of human tasks, including:
Complex assignment support
Automatically generated task flow
Business rules within human tasks
To create or customize these components, process developers must modify the project template and republish it to the Oracle BPM repository. After a project template is revised, you can use Business Process Composer to create and deploy BPM projects. See the "Customizing and Extending Oracle BPM Project Templates" chapter in the Oracle Fusion Applications Extensibility Guide for Developers for more information.
Before customizing BPMN processes using Business Process Composer, you should be familiar with the Oracle Fusion application architecture that enables customization, as described in Chapter 1, "Customizing and Extending Oracle Fusion Applications."
You should also understand the typical workflows for customization and extensibility, as described in Chapter 2, "Understanding the Customization Development Lifecycle."
You should be familiar with how to model business processes using the Business Process Modeling and Notation (BPMN) standard. See the "Modeling and Testing Business Processes" part in the Oracle Fusion Middleware Business Process Composer User's Guide for Oracle Business Process Management.
To create and deploy projects based on project templates, you must have specific privileges. Contact your security administrator for details. See the "Performing Administrative Tasks" chapter in the Oracle Fusion Middleware Business Process Composer User's Guide for Oracle Business Process Management for more information.
How you access Business Process Composer depends on which Oracle Fusion application you are using:
To access Business Process Composer from Oracle Fusion Human Capital Management, access the Business Process Composer task by choosing Setup and Maintenance from the Administration menu in the global area of Oracle Fusion Applications and searching for the task.
To access Business Process Composer from Oracle Fusion Customer Relationship Management:
Access Application Composer.
To access Application Composer, in the Navigator menu, choose Application Composer.
To edit or create business processes, you will need specific privileges. Contact your security administrator for details.
From the Application Composer navigator, click Business Processes.
A page displays showing a list of BPMN processes.
From the Actions menu, select Create.
To create a new business process choose Create from the Actions menu.
To modify an existing business process, choose a process from the list, then choose Update from the Actions menu.
Sign on to Business Process Composer.
After selecting one of the preceding steps, the Business Process Composer login screen appears. For more information, see the "Signing On to Oracle Business Process Composer" section in the Oracle Fusion Middleware Business Process Composer User's Guide for Oracle Business Process Management.
You can use Business Process Composer to customize or extend BPMN processes. BPMN processes are contained within a BPM project. After launching Business Process Composer the first step in modifying a BPMN process is to create a new project based on a project template or to open an existing BPM project.
Task: Create a New BPM Project Based on a Project Template
Oracle Fusion applications do not ship with running BPMN processes out-of-the-box. To integrate BPMN processes within Oracle Fusion applications, you must create a new BPM project based on a project template, deploy the project to runtime, and then configure the Oracle Fusion application to use the BPMN processes of the deployed BPM project.
Business Process Composer enables you to create new BPM projects based on project templates. For information about creating a new BPM project, see the "How to Create a New Project from a Project Template" section in the Oracle Fusion Middleware Business Process Composer User's Guide for Oracle Business Process Management.
See the product-specific documentation in Oracle Fusion Applications Help for a list of the default BPM project templates provided by Oracle Fusion Applications. By default, project templates are stored in the Templates folder of the BPM repository.
Task: Open an Existing BPM Project
If you have already created a new BPM project based on a template, you can continue to customize the project before deploying it to runtime.
For information about opening an existing BPM project, see the "How to Open a Project Using the Application Welcome Page" section in the Oracle Fusion Middleware Business Process Composer User's Guide for Oracle Business Process Management.
After creating a new BPM project based on a project template, you can modify the BPMN processes within the project. Additionally, you can customize the business catalog components within the BPM project.
Task: Open a BPMN Process
See "How to Open a Business Process" in the Oracle Fusion Middleware Business Process Composer User's Guide for Oracle Business Process Management for information about opening a BPMN process.
Task: Customize a BPMN Process
You can alter the flow of your BPMN process by adding, removing, or modifying BPMN flow objects.
See the "Working with Flow Elements" section in the Oracle Fusion Middleware Business Process Composer User's Guide for Oracle Business Process Management for more information about using the process editor to modify BPMN processes.
See the "Modeling and Testing Business Processes " part in the Oracle Fusion Middleware Business Process Composer User's Guide for Oracle Business Process Management for specific information about BPMN flow objects.
Task: Assign Business Catalog Components to a BPMN Flow Object
You can use Business Process Composer to assign reusable services from the business catalog to different BPMN flow objects.
The business catalog components and their corresponding flow objects are shown in Table 6-4.
Table 6-4 BPMN Flow Objects and Their Corresponding Services
| BPMN Flow Object | Business Catalog Component |
|---|---|
|
User task |
Human tasks |
|
Service task |
Services, including web services and adapters |
|
Business rules task |
Business rules |
See the "The Business Catalog" section in the Oracle Fusion Middleware Business Process Composer User's Guide for Oracle Business Process Management for more information about working with reusable services and the business catalog.
Task: Add Milestones to the Activity Guide
The activity guide of a BPM project defines a set of milestones. Each BPM project contains one activity guide. An activity guide can contain multiple milestones.
A milestone is a specific set of tasks that the process participant has to complete. A milestone is complete when the participant successfully runs a specific set of tasks in the milestone.
Each milestone is a defined by a set of human workflow tasks. Each human workflow task is itself a task flow that may require the collaboration of multiple participants in various roles.
See the "Using Guided Business Processes to Set Project Milestones" section in the Oracle Fusion Middleware Business Process Composer User's Guide for Oracle Business Process Management. for information about creating milestones.
Task: Customize Business Rules
Business rules enable dynamic decisions to be made at runtime that allow you to automate policies, computations, and reasoning while separating rule logic from the underlying application code.
Note:
You can use Business Process Composer to modify business rules within a BPM project. These changes are made to the runtime application when the project is deployed.
You can use Oracle SOA Composer to make runtime changes directly to the runtime environment, without deploying a project. See the "Customizing SOA Composite Applications" section in the Oracle Fusion Applications Extensibility Guide for Developers for more information about making runtime changes to a BPMN process.
For more information about customizing rules using Business Process Composer, see the "Using Oracle Business Rules" chapter in the Oracle Fusion Middleware Business Process Composer User's Guide for Oracle Business Process Management.
Task: Create or Customize Human Tasks
Human tasks enable you to integrate human interaction with connectivity to systems and services as part of an end-to-end process flow. Human tasks are responsible for handling all interactions with the users or groups participating in the business process.
Using Business Process Composer, you can create and customize human tasks. See the "Working with Human Tasks" section in the Oracle Fusion Middleware Business Process Composer User's Guide for Oracle Business Process Management for information about creating and configuring human tasks.
Task: Customize Expressions
Expressions are used to evaluate the data used within your process. Different flow objects use expressions to determine which path within the process to follow.
Expressions are used to configure the following BPMN elements:
Conditional Sequence Flows
Complex Gateways
Timer Events
Data Associations
Loop Markers
Multi-Instance Markers
User Task Advanced Properties
You can customize the expressions used within a BPMN process using Business Process Composer.
See the "Working with Expressions" section in the Oracle Fusion Middleware Business Process Composer User's Guide for Oracle Business Process Management.
You can save the changes you make to a BPM project to the BPM repository. In addition to saving your work in progress, saving a project in the repository enables you to share BPM projects with process developers using Business Process Composer and Oracle BPM Studio.
The BPM repository can also be used to share project templates created in Oracle BPM Studio. In the BPM repository, projects and project templates are stored in a default folder as shown in Table 6-5.
Table 6-5 Default Location of BPM Projects and Project Templates in the BPM Repository
| Type | Location |
|---|---|
|
BPM Projects |
/bpm/drafts |
|
BPM Project Templates |
/bpm/templates |
Within these default folders, you can create additional subfolders to organize your projects and project templates.
Task: Save a Project
See the "How to Save Changes to a Project" section in the Oracle Fusion Middleware Business Process Composer User's Guide for Oracle Business Process Management for information about how to save a project to the BPM repository.
After creating a new BPM project, you must deploy it to runtime to make the BPMN processes contained within it accessible to Oracle Fusion applications.
After customizing a project and publishing it, you must deploy the project to runtime. After the project is deployed, the BPMN processes within it are accessible to the Oracle Fusion applications that implement them.
Task: Deploy a BPM Project
There are three methods of deploying a BPM project to Oracle Fusion applications using Business Process Composer. The specific method you use depends on whether you are in a production or test environment:
Using a SAR file
This is the recommended deployment method if you are deploying a BPM project to a production environment. A SAR file is an archive of a SOA composite application that, like a BPM project, contains all of t he required resources of a deployable application.
You can use Business Process Composer to export a BPM project as a SAR file. See the "Deploying a BPM Project" chapter in the Oracle Fusion Middleware Business Process Composer User's Guide for Oracle Business Process Management.
After the project is exported as a SAR file, your system administrator must deploy it to runtime using Oracle Enterprise Manager.
Using a deployment plan
You can use Business Process Composer to generate a deployment plan for your project. Like a SAR file, system administrators can use a deployment plan to deploy a BPM project to runtime.
See the "How to Generate a Deployment Plan" section in the Oracle Fusion Middleware Business Process Composer User's Guide for Oracle Business Process Management for information about generating a deployment plan using Business Process Composer.
Directly from Business Process Composer
You can deploy a BPM project to runtime directly from Business Process Composer. See the "How to Deploy a Project to Run Time" section in the Oracle Fusion Middleware Business Process Composer User's Guide for Oracle Business Process Management for information about deploying a BPM project to runtime.
To deploy project using Business Process Composer you must have specific privileges. Contact your system administrator for details.
You may want to deploy a BPM project using the same name as the project and project template to make it easier to associate the deployed project with its design time version
Task: Configure Oracle Fusion Applications to Use BPMN Processes
After deploying a BPM project, you must configure the Oracle Fusion application to use the BPMN processes within the application. See Section 6.6, "Configuring Oracle Fusion Applications to Use BPMN Processes" for more information.
After deploying a BPM project to runtime, you must configure your Oracle Fusion applications to use the BPMN processes.
After deploying a BPM project, you must use Application Composer to add an object workflow that conditionally responds to a record modification event for the business object.
After deploying your BPM project to Oracle BPM runtime, you must register the BPMN processes using the Register Workforce Process page in Oracle Fusion Workforce Lifecycle Manager. When you register a process, you must provide the name of the process as it appears in the Start menu of the Manage Workforce Process page. Depending on how your process is designed, you may also need to specify the parameters that are passed to the workforce process on startup.
For more information, see product-specific documentation in Oracle Fusion Applications Help.
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