Getting started with IBM Process Designer

Introduction

Process Designer is an easy-to-use graphics-oriented tool that enables you to model and implement your business processes and easily demonstrate process design and functionality during development efforts. This overview describes how to begin using all of the tools that are available with Process Designer.

Overview

Here we are going to discuss on below features.

v Process Designer interface

v Concurrent editing

v Setting preferences

Process Designer Interface

Before you start to build processes with IBM® Process Designer, you must understand the tools that are available in the Process Designer interface.

The Process Designer interface provides the tools to model your processes in IBM BPM. The following image and corresponding table describe the parts of the Designer view that you interact with when modeling processes and implementing the steps in those processes.

Table 1. Description of numbered areas on the Designer interface image
Number	Area	Description
1	Main toolbar	Provides access to the Designer view and Inspector. Also provides access to Process Center and Optimizer if you open the Process Designer desktop editor. The main toolbar is also where you go to save all open editors, take a snapshot, and view web-based help.
2	Library	Provides access to the library items for the current process application. We can create and edit library items. Note: Users who have administrative access to the application control access to process applications.
3	Main canvas	Where you can graphically model and configure your process and design the layout of coaches, human services, and heritage human services.
4	Palette	Provides BPMN elements and variables that you can use to model and configure your process.
5	Property manager	Where you can set properties and configuration options for selected components in your process.

Concurrent Editing

Multiple users can simultaneously access and change process applications and library items in IBM® Process Designer. When you edit concurrently, you collaborate with other team members to create the library items that you need for your project. For example, you can communicate about your ideas and edits with instant messaging and see the results in the Designer view as they happen.

Note: Each user must be connected to the same Process Center and each user must have write access to the process application or toolkit where the library items are located. When you edit concurrently with other users, ensure that your connection status is good.

When you are working in the Designer view, you can see when other users are working in the same process application, as shown in the following screen capture:

You can also see when others are viewing or editing the same library item, as shown in the following screen capture:

When multiple users work on the same library item, such as a human service, each user can see the changes when edits are saved. To ensure that all users are aware which library items are open and what changes are being made, Process Designer provides the following notifications:

Ø  When another user opens a library item by showing a user icon. You can hover over the icon to see who that user is.

Ø  When another user is editing a library item by displaying the words Read Only next to the library item. When a user saves their work, the library item will be available to edit.

Ø  When another user has saved changes while you are editing a library item by displaying the words Read Only next to the library item. When you click Save, a Save conflict message displays to ask you either to save your changes and override the other user's changes or discard the changes and accept the other user's changes.

Ø  When multiple users start to edit a library item at the same time, before the Read Only text appears, by displaying a warning icon and message to suggest to each user that they either immediately save their changes or discard them.

Setting Preferences

To set the locale for IBM Process Center Console and Process Designer, access the Process Center Console by opening your web browser to the following location:

http://[host_name]:[port]/ProcessCenter. Click Preferences in the upper right corner and choose the language that you want from the list. When you change the locale, you must exit and then restart IBM Process Designer for the change to take effect. (When you are accessing Process Center Console from a browser, you can log out and then log back in for the change to take effect.)

The locale preference that is selected applies to the user who is logged in. Each IBM Business Process Manager interface that is started by the same user in the same environment uses this preference setting.

Procedure

1.      Select File > Preferences from the main menu.

2.      Click the IBM BPM entry to display the available options.

3.      Click the option that you want. For example, to set the user name for Blueworks Live™ process subscriptions, click the Blueworks Live option.

Option	Description
Blueworks Live	Set the Blueworks Live server URL and email address for Blueworks Live process subscriptions. Tip: Changing the email address or the URL logs you out of Blueworks Live.
Capabilities	Control the capabilities of the current user. For example, to create external activities in IBM Process Designer, you must enable IBM BPM Developer Capability and IBM BPM Advanced Features.
Coaches	Select whether to open coach views in the desktop editor or the web editor by default.
Decisions	Control the locale setting for BAL Rules.
JavaScript	Set preferences for the JavaScript editor included in IBM Process Designer. For example, you can choose whether to display JavaScript warnings.
Optimizer Settings	Set options for the Optimizer. For example, the KPI thresholds that are used by the Visualization Modes are the thresholds from the current working version of your process application or toolkit. If you want to use the KPI thresholds from the snapshot (version) of your process application or toolkit that was most recently run and tracked, change the Optimizer to the following preference setting: Use the KPI threshold values from the actual version of the Process App/Toolkit.
Passwords	Manage the passwords that are stored when running tasks from the Inspector.
Web Browser	Select the web browser to use when web pages are opened from IBM Process Designer. If you do not see a particular external web browser as an option, click New to add it.

Conclusion

In this article we covered IBM Process Designer. We will see in future article how to use these features in IBM Process Designer and we will implement the scenarios by using these features.

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