Siebel Business Process Framework: Task UI Guide > Best Practices for Working with Tasks > Best Practices for Configuring Tasks >

Best Practices for Invoking Business Services

Business services allow you to execute predefined or custom actions in a task flow. 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 task 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.

  NOTE:  Any code invoked (either synchronously or asynchronously) will not be able to see any data not yet committed from temporary storage to base tables. You can avoid this problem by adding a commit step before invoking the server component task.

You can use Siebel VB or Siebel eScript to define your own custom business services that you can invoke from a task. You can define business services by navigating to Site Map > Administration - Business Service, or by selecting the business service object in Oracle's 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 task 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 tasks cannot include browser scripts; they only work with server scripts. A business service with browser scripts will fail if it is executed from a task on the Siebel Server.