Copyright © Cloud Software Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Step 3: Identify Components

After you have identified the processes, you must understand the components of the process. This section discusses some potential components.

•	Shared Resources

•	Services and Corresponding Activities

•	ManualWork Activities

•	Transitions and Conditions

•

Mapping

•	Exceptions

Many components are activity resources. A complete list of all activities is included in the TIBCO ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks Process Design Guide. You can also access documentation for an activity from TIBCO Designer using the What is This option from the right-button menu of the corresponding resource’s menu.

Shared Resources

Some activities use shared resources. For example, a WSDL File shared resource is used by SOAP activities and a JDBC Connection shared resource is used by JDBC activities.

Services and Corresponding Activities

The business process uses services to retrieve or send data. There are two kinds of services:

•	Adapter services—The source and target applications your enterprise uses cannot directly talk to each other or to TIBCO ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks. To enable this communication, you can use TIBCO adapters. Adapters can be configured using TIBCO Designer.

•	Web services—Web services are external to TIBCO ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks but are supported by several activities that are part of TIBCO ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks.

The example discussed in this manual requires the following activities:

•	An application server sends the incoming orders over JMS. The business process uses a JMS Queue Receiver activity that receives the order.

•	A PeopleSoft adapter receives a request and sends data back to the process. For the problem at hand, a request-response adapter service is well suited. The business process uses an Invoke an Adapter Request-Response Service activity to interact with the adapter.

•	A web service provided by the shipping company is invoked through a SOAP Request Response activity.

•	A Siebel subscriber adapter service receives the order from a Publish to Adapter activity and enters the order, including the Order ID assigned by PeopleSoft, into the Siebel customer service system.

Other activities include a Send Mail activity that sends an email to the customer if shipping is delayed.

ManualWork Activities

The activities in the ManualWork palette are useful for automated business processes that have a few steps which require user interaction. In many cases, the Assign Work activity is appropriate for implementing the interaction. Other activities in the palette include, for example, a Modify Work activity that allows administrators to perform actions on a work item.

In order to use the activities in the Manual Work palette, TIBCO InConcert must have been installed and users must have been created with TIBCO Administrator and exported to InConcert.

See Step 5: Optionally, Add Manual Work Activities for some additional information. For a detailed discussion, see the TIBCO ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks Palette Reference.

Transitions and Conditions

Transitions go from each activity in the process to the next activity. Each activity must have at least one incoming and at least one outgoing transition. Each activity can potentially be called from several other activities or can conditionally call several activities.

For example, if a credit check were included in a business process, the result of the credit check outcome could determine the next activity. A negative credit check could result in an email to the customer. A positive credit check could result in a different email and placement of the order.

Mapping

For each activity in the process there is an appropriate input. For example, the Send Mail activity needs input that includes information about the customer and the Order ID. At times, the output of one activity directly maps into the input of the next activity in the process. Very often, however, an activity requires a subset, or a superset of the incoming process data, or data may need to be modified.

To give each activity the appropriate input, TIBCO ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks lets you map the process data to the input of the activity. For example, the Send Mail activity uses the customer email address and the Order ID but ignores the shipping address which is also part of the order.

Exceptions

As you analyze your business problem, you should include as much information about exceptions as possible. For the employees of your company, graceful exception management will result in a noticeable increase in productivity. If exception handling is flawed, integration automation might actually result in decreased productivity because a lot of time is spent on dealing with exceptions.

If exceptions are included in your initial design, you can make them part of the business process, and ultimately deliver a more robust system faster.

Decide on exception handling standards across business phases to make it easier to identify exceptions and understand how they are related.

Copyright © Cloud Software Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved