Overview of Advanced Registration Flows

In previous releases of ALER, the asset registration process required the registrar or advanced submitter to manually initiate and monitor the registration process. The required information was gathered and entered on the appropriate tabs in the Asset Editor. The registrar examined each tab and monitored the workflow. When information for a specific stage of the workflow was acceptable, the registrar approved the data on the appropriate tab. The registrar also had the option to edit any of the information for any stage of the process.

The introduction of Advanced Registration Flows in ALER 3.0, Advanced Edition, attempts to automate the manual asset registration process by providing a set of predefined flows designed to automate a set of common ALER asset registration tasks, such as asset submission, acceptance, registration, and other governance processes.

To accomplish this ALER 3.0 includes an embedded, JMS-based event engine that manages the flow of ALER asset registration events, in the form of Web Service events. These events trigger the pre-defined flows. Once installed, the Advanced Registration Flows can be run out-of-the box or can be tailored to suit your environment.

For ease of use, you can use the predefined ALPBM endpoint or create your own Web Service endpoints to subscribe to ALER events. There are also event monitoring and logging tools for troubleshooting and tuning purposes.

Example "Community Flow" Use Case

In previous releases, the asset acceptance, assignment, registration processes required multiple registrars to manually initiate and monitor the process from end-to-end via numerous emails. In some cases, there was only one registrar that was notified about the newly submitted assets, and as a result, the registrar could be overloaded with emails about new assets.

The Community flow provides a way to automate the asset acceptance, assignment, and registration process by allowing the configuration of automated assignment rules and also introduces the notion of federated registrars among different authorities. Rather than spamming many registrars across all communities (through the system registrar notification), you can limit the system registrar to one or a few individuals, and let the Automatic Acceptance flow accept assets on behalf of a registrar-of-record for the community. The Community flow feature can distribute asset submissions to those with the authority to approve them for the community.

For example, you can add two communities and configure two different registrars responsible for each community. Then, depending on the producing projects or asset types, certain assets can belong to a community. The Community flow automatically accepts such assets in the same way it would be manually accepted by a registrar.

Software Components

ALER Event Manager

The Event Manager emits asset registration events in the form of Web Service messages. These events trigger pre-built flows that automate ALER asset submission, acceptance, registration, and other governance processes. See Configuring the ALER Event Manager.

Subscription Manager

The Subscription Manager is XML-based configuration file that is responsible for managing the event subscriptions by the Web Service endpoints (either the predefined ALPBM endpoint or user-defined endpoints) where matched events will be delivered. The Event Manager uses the EndPointEventSubscription.xml file to load information about the endpoints where events need to be delivered. See Configuring the ALER Event Manager.

JMS Server

The Event Manager uses an embedded version of Apache ActiveMQ JMS Server that is enabled by default. The embedded JMS server is configured to run out-of-the-box without any additional configuration. However, you can also configure the Event Manager to use an external JMS server, such as Weblogic Server JMS or IBM MQSeries. See Configuring JMS Servers for ALER.

Event Monitor

A tool to monitor the events that are generated by the Event Manager. The Event Monitor peeks into the event traffic and prints information, such as the event body and event properties. See Monitoring and Managing Events.

Advanced Registration Flows

Community Assignment Flow - provides a way to automate the asset acceptance, assignment, and registration process by allowing the configuration of automated assignment rules and also provides the notion of federated registrars among different authorities. See Configuring Community Flows.
Automated Acceptance and Automated Registration Flow - in addition to using the Community Flows to automatically accept and register the assets, a number of user roles can be used to accept and register assets. See Configuring Automated Acceptance and Automated Registration Flows.
Multi-tier Approval Flow - structures the tab approval process in multiple steps called tiers. Asset approval tabs can be grouped in tiers, and the Mult-tier Approval flow tracks each tier to verify whether all the tabs are approved by the designated approvers. As soon as the last tab in a tier is approved, the flow starts the next tier by assigning the asset to the next level of designated approvers. See Multi-tier Automatic Assignment Flows.
Metadata Change Flow - exposes a flexible framework where state changes or metadata changes can be wired to actions. The Metadata Change flows come with the a set of pre-bundled actions. New actions can be developed in the form of ALER flows and can be plugged in. See Metadata Change Flows.
Time-based Escalation Flow -track assets in various states and notifies all interested parties. There are four different kinds of Time-based Escalation flows and each one can be configured individually. See Time-based Escalation Flows.
Validation Expiration Flow - tracks expired assets prior to the specified expiration date, as well as at the day of expiration, and sends warning notifications to all interested parties. See Validation Expiration Flows.

Event Management Tools

There are event monitoring and logging tools for troubleshooting and tuning purposes.

Web-based Process Administrator

The ALBPM Process Execution Administrator actively manages the orchestration of asset registration events in the form of Web Service messages. For more information, see Administering ALBPM Web Applications.

Log Viewer

The ALBPM Log Viewer enables you to read information logged by the Process Execution Engine. A set of log files is created for each project you define. The Studio Log Viewer reads the files and displays them to help you monitor and trace Engine execution. For more information, see Using The ALBPM Log Viewer.

Flow Email Notification Templates

The Automated Registration Flows automatically send email notifications under many circumstances. There are five new email templates for the new flows. Administrators can customize the email subject, body, etc., the same way as other email templates. See Customizing Flow Notification Email Templates.

Flow Configuration Tools

There are flow configuration tools for generating new configuration file, refreshing exisiting files, and encrypting passwords. For more information, see Monitoring and Managing Events.

Generating a New Config File

ALER administrators may need to configure and customize flows because there will be new asset types, projects, categorizations, etc. The Generate Config XML tool connects to ALER and creates a new file that can be customized.

Refreshing an Existing Config File

The Refresh Config XML tool lets you to refresh a Config XML file without restarting the Event Manager.

Encrypting Config File Passwords

The security Encrypt Password tool lets you to encrypt the passwords for security reasons.

Configuring and Managing Advanced Registration Flows