Siebel Business Process Designer Administration Guide > For Developers: Workflow Process Steps >

About Business Service Steps

Business services allow you to execute predefined or custom actions in a workflow process. Some examples of predefined business services include:

• Notifications. Notifications can be sent to employees or contacts using the Outbound Communication Server business service.
• Assignment. Assignment Manager can assign an object in a workflow process by calling the Synchronous Assignment Manager Request business service.
• Server tasks. You can run a server component task using the Asynchronous or Synchronous Server Requests business service.

For a list of some of the most commonly-used predefined business services, see Predefined Business Services.

You can use Siebel VB or Siebel eScript to define your own custom business services that you can invoke from a workflow process. You can define business services by navigating to Site Map > Administration - Business Service, or by selecting the business service object in Siebel Tools. The methods and arguments you define in your business service appear in the picklists in the Arguments list applets for the business service.

The main parts of creating Business Service steps for a workflow process are:

• Defining a Business Service Step
• Defining Input Arguments for Business Service Steps
• Defining Output Arguments for Business Service Steps

CAUTION:  Business services invoked from workflow processes cannot include browser scripts; they only work with server scripts. A business service with browser scripts will fail if it is executed from a workflow process on the Siebel Server.