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Workflow Interaction with Other Siebel Components

In automating your organization's business processes, Siebel Workflow interacts with various components of the Siebel eBusiness 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 on the Server Request business service, see Predefined Business Services.

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 messaging involves:

• Sending asynchronous messages from an interactive-mode 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. If the component is not available in the current server, SRBroker then sends it to other servers on a round-robin basis.

Siebel Workflow also uses SRBroker to resume waiting processes. SRBroker pools a database table on a regular basis to see all tasks that needs to be resumed.

Personalization Engine

The Personalization engine handles run-time events (application events, applet events, and business component events). It is through integration with the Personalization engine that Siebel Workflow processes 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. If the workflow process is persisted, it is resumed in the Workflow Process Manager server component.

Inbox

Inbox is a single screen in Siebel eBusiness applications that shows all approval and notification items assigned end users regardless of the screen where the item originated. Inbox shows enough detailed information about the item so that the end users can act on the item from the Inbox and not have to navigate to other screens for more information. See Applications Administration Guide for more information on Inbox.