Working with the Business Process Monitor

This chapter provides overviews of the business process monitor, business process development and annotation guidelines, and discusses how to:

• Set up the business process monitor.

• Monitor business processes.

Understanding the Business Process Monitor

This section discusses:

• Business process monitor overview.

• Milestone annotation.

Business Process Monitor Overview

The business process monitor provides functional users with the ability to view status information of business process instances which are initiated successfully. From the monitor, users see the progress of process instances in the form of milestones predefined in the business process at the time of development. Milestones are business process activities with annotations and they represent the culmination of significant events that happen in a process. You can use annotations to determine when, to whom, and in what name a milestone should be displayed on the monitor.

Users can launch the monitor from multiple places: the transaction in which the process was initiated, the 360-Degree View, and the corresponding worklist entry on My Worklist.

When a user clicks a business process instance link to access the monitor, the business process monitor retrieves information of the instance from the BPEL Engine (by supplying the instance ID). The information includes conversation ID, node name, process name and description, transaction name, link and description, the submitted by value, and the Java Naming Directory Interface (JNDI) details (based on the node name) that are provided on the JNDI Details page. The monitor then parses the XML data that is collected (removing the details regarding unannotated and nonviewable activities and displays the clean, processed milestone data accordingly.

The business process monitor is designed to provide monitoring capabilities that are sufficient to meet the needs of functional users, and it does not replace the BPEL Console monitor (external to the CRM system), which shows complete process details in a graphical format and is targeted for the technical-savvy audience to troubleshoot issues.

Note. The business process monitor provides status information for asynchronous process instances only. Information for synchronous process instances is not available on the monitor.

In order for the BPEL Engine to collect the necessary details needed for the business process monitor to display relevant details properly, you must set the value of the auditLevel property for the BPEL domain to production. Use the Manage BPEL Domain link that is available on the BPEL Console to set the property value.

Milestone Annotation

The business process monitor supports the display of two types of BPEL activities: invoke and scope. An invoke activity can call out to either other business processes or web services. A scope activity is a structured activity that can contain multiple activities (including scope). Functionally, a scope activity can be used to group related activities together and marked as a milestone of a business process.

In order for business process information to be displayed on the monitor in an accurate and effective manner, you must identify milestones in business processes and they must be annotated according to rules and guidelines. Also, make sure that the end users can comprehend the level of completion based on milestones details. Two types of annotation categories are available: general and analysis. Use the general category for annotating milestones to be shown on the monitor. This table lists the annotation attributes that are supported by the business process monitor:

Note. Predefined values for these supported annotation attributes are case sensitive. If you enter a value for an attribute that is not predefined, the attribute will be ignored.

You can make milestones visible to some but not all users by using annotations. The system delivers two views for users to access information on the monitor: external for customers and internal for agents. By default, any user who is associated with a delivered business process role has access to all information on the monitor and can switch between these two user views. If any of these users has a role and it is linked to the permission list that is specified for the external user view, then the user cannot see any internal milestones, which have the EUM_VIEW_INTERNAL annotation attribute set to Y. Using this attribute and permission list, you can provide a link on self-service pages for customers to access the monitor and view process instance information that is not intended for internal viewership. By default, all milestones are available for everyone who has a business process role unless specified in the annotation attribute. The CRM system provides a pagelet for self-service users to access cases and orders for their insurance policies and financial accounts from the self-service application.

Note. The business process monitor does not display the status of milestones that create manual worklists and are currently waiting for a response. The monitor can associate the worklist item with the milestone only after the worklist item is completed. The monitor cannot modify or cancel manual worklists created by milestones.

See Understanding Business Process Development and Annotation Guidelines.

Understanding Business Process Development and Annotation Guidelines

This section discusses:

• Development and annotation guidelines.

• Development and annotation examples.

• Business process monitor error messages

Development and Annotation Guidelines

The business process monitor displays business process status information using milestones. During the design phase of business process development, it is important to identify places where status checks make sense and add milestones to these areas. Milestones must be annotated in accordance to CRM-specific rules and guidelines, otherwise data maybe unavailable or displayed incorrectly on the monitor.

Note. This section describes development and annotation considerations from the perspective of the business process monitor and does not document the actual development and annotation process. Refer to the Oracle BPEL Process Manager documentation for more information on how to annotate a business process.

You use the annotation capabilities provided by the Oracle BPEL Designer to annotate milestones in a business process. In order to generate a useful and functional representation of business processes on the business process monitor, certain guidelines on how to design and annotate processes apply. It is recommended that these guidelines be observed to optimize the monitor's displaying capabilities. In addition to guidelines, rules exist and they must be followed strictly so that data can be displayed properly.

This table lists rules that apply when developing and annotating business processes that will be viewed by users on the business process monitor:

This table lists guidelines that apply when developing and annotating business processes that will be viewed by users on the business process monitor. It is highly recommended that these guidelines be followed for the monitor to display data properly:

Note that Oracle provides multilanguage capabilities for data (such as outcomes) that is stored in the PeopleSoft CRM system; however, internalization of data from the Oracle BPEL Process Manager needs to be specified as part of the business process design.

Development and Annotation Examples

This section discusses examples of some of the common business process designs that can cause issues to the business process monitor display:

• Activities without annotations.

• Conditional activities.

• Parallel activities.

• Exception activities.

Activities Without Annotations

In this example, suppose the business process has two annotated activities to display on the monitor: Scope_1 and callbackClient. However, the other intermediary activity, Java_Embedding_1, is not.

Suppose that the business process is currently in progress (overall state is In Progress) and Java_Embedding_1 is being executed, and this is the status information available on the monitor:

Notice that none of the milestones being shown are in the In Progress state; the overall and milestone-level states are not synchronized.

Now if the business process fails in Java_Embedding_1, an activity that is not displayed, the overall state of the business process becomes Completed but failed. However, users cannot see this information at the milestone level because that particular milestone is not displayed.

To resolve the issue, adhere to the annotation guidelines and rules when designing activities, and make sure to use only scope or invoke activities that are supported by the monitor. In this scenario, put Java_Embedding_1 in a scope and annotate the scope.

Conditional Activities

In this example, the business process contains four annotated activities to display on the monitor: CheckSchool, CheckWorkHistory, Confirmation, and SendResponse. CheckSchool and CheckWorkHistory are conditional activities, which means only one of them runs as a result of the condition evaluation. The scope activity, CheckApplication, is not annotated as a milestone.

Suppose that the business process is currently in progress (overall state is In Progress), and this is the status information available on the monitor:

The monitor does not indicate that CheckSchool and CheckWorkHistory are mutually exclusive. CheckWorkHistory would not run if CheckSchool did and the monitor reflects the states correctly. However, users cannot see the relationship of these two activities and either activity always has the status of Not Yet Started.

To resolve this issue, try putting a switch activity in the scope activity and mark the scope as a milestone. Within the switch statement, do not mark the conditional activities as normal milestones. If it is important to show conditional activities as milestones, make them exception milestones.

Parallel Activities

In this example, this business process has five annotated activities to display on the monitor: VerifyInput, CheckCredit, CheckWork, CheckBank, and callbackClient. The flow activity is not enclosed within a scope activity.

Suppose that the business process is currently in progress (overall state is In Progress), and this is the status information available on the monitor:

The monitor does not indicate that CheckCredit, CheckWork, and CheckBank are parallel activities; therefore, it does not explain why an activity completed before the one preceding it.

To resolve the issue, put the flow activity within a scope activity (CheckApplication) and annotate the scope as a milestone with a name indicating that it is a parallel activity, for example, CheckApplication (P). A cleaner representation of the statuses is displayed on the monitor like so:

Exception Activities

In this example, the business process has these annotated activities to display on the monitor: Reservation, CarReservation, HotelReservation, ReservationError, Rollback, and callbackClient. Both ReservationError and Rollback are activities that occur when exceptions happen.

Suppose that the business process is currently in progress (overall state is In Progress), and this is the status information available on the monitor:

The monitor does not indicate that both ReservationError and Rollback activities do not happen under normal circumstances.

To resolve the issue, mark them as exception milestones so they don't appear on the monitor until they are executed.

Business Process Monitor Error Messages

The monitor displays an error on the browser when a problem with data retrieval occurs. If the error takes place while refreshing the monitor (which has some data), the system displays the appropriate error message and the data that is being shown is not deleted.

This table lists several common errors and the messages that appear when the errors occur:

Setting Up the Business Process Monitor

To set up the business process monitor, use the JNDI Details (RBB_JNDI_SETUP) and View Setup (RBB_VIEW_SETUP) components.

This section discusses how to:

• Specify JNDI connection details.

• Define user views.

• Test business process annotations.

Pages Used to Set Up the Business Process Monitor

Specifying JNDI Connection Details

Access the JNDI Details page (Set Up CRM, Common Definitions, Business Process, Infrastructure, JNDI Details, JNDI Details).

Both the business process monitor and the Java module use this information to query the BPEL Process Manager server. The business process monitor uses this information to get the status information of business process instances and their activities.

PeopleTools provides an API to retrieve the BPEL node, the domain name, and password for a given operation.

Defining User Views

Access the View Setup page (Set Up CRM, Common Definitions, Business Process, End-User Monitor, View Setup, View Setup).

The system delivers two views for displaying data on the business process monitor, external user and internal user.

Testing Business Process Annotations

Access the User Test Page page (Set Up CRM, Common Definitions, Business Process, End-User Monitor, User Test Page, User Test Page).

Note. As delivered, this page is not initially available via menu navigation. You may need to enable the page by adjusting its Content Reference (CREF). Navigate to PeopleTools, Portal, Structure and Content to disable hiding this page from navigation.

Use this page to test if business processes are annotated properly to be displayed on the business process monitor.

Monitoring Business Processes

This section discusses how to:

• Access business process instances at runtime.

• Monitor business process instances.

• View worklist entry details.

Pages Used to Monitor Business Processes

Accessing Business Process Instances At Runtime

Access a transaction that has initiated business processes (navigation varies by component: refer to the documentation for the parent component).

Click the service operation link to access the business process monitor and view details of the process instance.

Monitoring Business Process Instances

Access the Business Process Monitor page (click the service operation link on a component that can initiate business processes at runtime).

To be able to access the business process monitor, users must have roles that are associated with any of these permission lists: CRRBBADMIN, CRRBBSU, or CRRBBUSER.

The top part of the page displays basic information about the business process and the transaction from which the said process is initiated. The page also shows a navigation path of the process when users are currently viewing steps in nested nodes. The path gives users an idea where they are in the process and provides a quick way to go back to the parent node if needed.

Viewing Worklist Entry Details

See Completing Business Process Worklist Entries.