Copyright © TIBCO Software Inc. All Rights Reserved
Copyright © TIBCO Software Inc. All Rights Reserved


Chapter 8 Working with Process Data : Creating Participants

Creating Participants
Participants are used to identify who or what performs an activity. For example, in a hiring process, a person (Human Participant) interviews the candidate and an email system (system participant) sends out an automatic follow-up reminder. There are the following options for creating participants:
You can also refactor the participants in your process into an organization model (see Exporting Participants to an Organization Model).
Basic Types
There are several basic types of participant:
Role - identifies the role responsible for performing an activity. For example, in a financial institution there may be roles such as Reconciler, Manager, and so on.
Organizational Unit - identifies the department or unit within an organization that performs an activity. For example, Legal, Marketing and so on.
Human - identifies a specific person or user that performs an activity.
System - identifies an activity that is performed by a system.
Organization Model Query - allows you to enter a query using a script or expression. This is evaluated when a referencing task is executed at run-time, so the actual participant is resolved and the activity dispatched and offered to the participant. A query could resolve to a participant in the package/process or to an entity in the organizational model.
Participants from the Organization Model
Besides the basic types of participant described in the previous section, you can also create participants by creating an external reference to types defined in a model of your own organization.
You can create an external reference to the following parts of the organization model:
You can also create an organization model from the participants you have defined in your process as described in Exporting Participants to an Organization Model.
Creating a Participant
To create a new participant, do the following:
1.
2.
Right-click Participants and select New > Participant. The New Participant dialog is displayed.
3.
Click the Back button if you need to change either the name of the Project and Package where the participant will be created. If you want to change either, click the Project or Package button.
Participants can be created at either the package level or at the process level. Creating them at the package level is recommended as it enables them to be shared amongst processes. Select the Process checkbox and specify a process if you want to create the participant at the process level.
4.
Click Next.
5.
Specify the Name and Type of the participant (either a basic type, or an external reference as described previously in this section) and click Finish.
To create a basic type, select Basic Type and choose from Role, Organization_Unit, Human, System and Organization Model Query, and click Finish.
If you select the Organization Model Query button, you can then enter the Organization Model Query Script in Resource Query Language (RQL) using a script or expression in the General tab of the Properties view. This is evaluated when a referencing task is executed at run-time, so the actual participant is resolved and the activity dispatched and offered to the participant. A query could resolve to a participant in the package/process or to an entity in the organizational model.
To create an external reference to an organization model, select External Reference, and click to select a type from the organization model.
Choose a type from those shown in Matching Items, or key in the first few characters of the name you are looking for in the field under Select type(s)(? = any character, * = any string and choose from those shown. Click OK.
The participant that you created appears in the Project Explorer.
You can import participants from other projects. At the process package level, right-click and select Import Participants Wizard. You can then select which project/s you wish to import participants from.
All external references to participants from within the same project must be to the same major version of the organization model. However, you can reference different minor or micro versions of the model. For example, if you have included a reference to a participant in version 1.0.0.qualifier of the organization model, and the model subsequently changes, you could reference a participant in version 1.1.0.qualifier, but not version 2.0.0.qualifier.
Associating Participants with Activities
You can associate a participant with an activity to identify who or what performs the activity. You can do this either by dragging and dropping the participant onto the activity or in the Properties view for the activity.
Drag and Drop
You can drag a participant onto an activity as follows:
1.
2.
You can select multiple participants for drag and drop operations using the Ctrl (for single selection) or Shift (to select a range) keys.
3.
Add Task Participant(s)  Selecting this option adds the participants to any existing participants for the activity.
Set Task Participant(s)  Selecting this option clears any existing participants associated with the activity, before setting the participants to those you selected.
Properties View
To associate a participant with an activity do the following:
1.
2.
The Select Participants dialog is displayed:
3.
Highlight participants you want to select and click Add to move them to the Selection column. When you have finished selecting Participants, click OK.
You can select multiple participants by pressing either the Ctrl (for single selection) or Shift (to select a range) keys while making your selection.
The wildcard ? returns all matching participants. Use the * wildcard to restrict the results (for example, *2 to return all Participants ending in 2. Note that the wildcard * by itself does not return any results; it only works in conjunction with a string.
4.
Highlighting Participants
To see what tasks a participant is assigned to, click in the Process Editor for the process. On the toolbar, you will see a button:
Click on this to see the dropdown, and select Enable Highlighting.
Alternatively, you can select Diagram > Highlighting > Enable Highlighting.
Select the participant in Process Explorer, and in the Process Editor the tasks which use this participant will be highlighted (framed with green lines). Other tasks in the process will be grayed out.
This behavior also applies to data fields and parameters.
Highlights are cumulative.
The current highlight filter is shown when you use the Process Editor mouse-over tooltip.
Highlights are removed when anything other than the highlighted diagram objects are selected.

Copyright © TIBCO Software Inc. All Rights Reserved
Copyright © TIBCO Software Inc. All Rights Reserved