Siebel CRM Web Services Reference > Siebel CRM Web Services Overview > About Siebel Web Service Modeling >

Exposing a Workflow as a Web Service

The following statements can be applied to Workflows consumed as Web services.

• A workflow corresponds to a single Web service Operation.
• Workflow Process Properties are Web service messages. A Workflow PropertySet has no direct external representation but can be mapped to an Integration object.

You can expose workflows as Web services in the following procedure.

NOTE:  Workflows that are either Persistent or Interactive must be re-factored to work as Web services.

To expose workflows as a Web service

1. Identify Process Properties that are to be exposed and correctly mark them as follows:
   • In if used as an input argument.
   • Out if used as an output argument.
   • In/Out if used as both input and output.

     NOTE:  The In, In/Out, and Out arg types are included in the interface definition.

2. If any Process Property is a Property Set hierarchy, complete the following steps:
   1. Define the property set structure as an Integration object in tools.
   2. Specify data type for this Process Property as Hierarchy and associate with Integration object.

      NOTE:  This is important as you must expose a strongly-typed interface, including arguments.

3. In the Administration - Web Services view, do the following:
4. Create a new Web service record or choose an existing Web service in the Inbound Web Services applet. The WSDL XML namespace should be entered here.
5. Create a record in Service Ports, choose the Workflow in the Business Service/Business Process name column, set the Transport and URL, and select SOAP_DOC_LITERAL in the Binding column.

   NOTE:  To model a complete Web service with more than one operation, several Service Ports might be specified under a single Web service. This is normal and expected.

6. Create a service operation in Operations, set the WSDL operation name in the Operation Name column, and designate RunProcess as the Siebel method to execute in the Method Display Name column.

NOTE:  The observation about operation naming uniqueness noted in this topic applies here as well. The Generally, Siebel has resolved this uniqueness requirement by combining the Service Name with an abbreviation of the Workflow Process Name.