IBM BPM on Cloud User Roles

Introduction

IBM® Business Process Manager on Cloud users can access different environments and accomplish specific tasks that are based on the roles and environments that are assigned to each user ID.

IBM BPM on Cloud user roles assigned by an account administrator

Some user roles are defined in the IBM BPM on Cloud by the account administrator, as shown in below table.

User role	Description	Tasks for this user
Account Administrator	Users assigned the account administrator role manage the accounts of other users. Account administrators can manage which environments each user can access and the IBM Business Process Manager groups that the user is assigned to within each environment. Account administrators can also monitor the usage by the type of user over a period the account administrator selects.	Invite users. Assign user roles and environments. Manage user permissions to access environments. View usage patterns of users over specified periods. Measure concurrent users.
Operator	Users assigned the Operator role monitor and manage performance in the IBM BPM on Cloud environment.	Retrieve log files and monitor Java™ database connectivity (JDBC). Create a data source to securely connect to relational databases. Import certificates to securely connect to service providers. View performance. Monitor Java database connectivity (JDBC).

IBM BPM on Cloud user roles defined by environment access

Other user roles are defined by the environments to which the account administrator provides access for the user, as shown in below table.

User role	Description	Tasks for this user
Developers (or Authors)	Users who are assigned access to the Development Environment are software developers who create and unit test business processes for other users, so these users must have software development experience. Developers can download and use development tools, such as IBM Process Center, IBM Process Designer, and IBM Integration Designer. After the processes are created and tested in the development environment, snapshots can be promoted to the test environment for validation.	Develop process applications.
Testers	Users who are assigned access to the test environment are software testers who validate business processes, so these users must have experience testing software. The test environment includes the same tools as the process runtime operating environment. These tools are used to validate snapshots before business processes are promoted to the process runtime operating environment. The test environment is a stable environment.	Test process applications.
Business users	Users who are assigned access to the Process Runtime Operating Environment are business users who work with business management applications and tasks. These users participate in previously validated business processes. Most IBM BPM on Cloud users are business users who work in the process run-time operating environment.	Use completed process applications.

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Downloading and installing IBM Business Process Manager

Introduction:

To use IBM® Process Designer to develop IBM Business Process Manager Process applications, first download and install Process Designer. Always download and install Process Designer from the instance of IBM BPM on Cloud that you are working in.

Overview

Ensure that your user ID is permitted to access the development environment with the tw_author permission in the BPM Group Management window. Your IBM BPM on Cloud account administrator can verify and change your access permissions for you.

1.      On a local computer, log in to IBM BPM on Cloud (https://www.bpm.ibmcloud.com).

2.      Click the Library tab.

3.      Download Process Designer.

a.       Ensure that your browser is configured to allow downloads.

b.      From the Process Center component in the development environment, click the IBM Process Designer link.

c.       From the IBM Process Designer window, click the Download link.

4.      Extract the files from the IBM Process Designer.zip file to a convenient directory and open that directory.

5.      Install Process Designer. The IBM Process Designer.zip package contains the following batch files, one of which you must run to install Process Designer, depending on the configuration of your Windows operating system:

installProcessDesigner_admin.bat

If you are signed in to your Windows workstation as the administrator, run installProcessDesigner_admin.bat by right-clicking installProcessDesigner_admin.bat and choosing Run as administrator.

installProcessDesigner_nonadmin.bat

If you are in a secure Windows environment where you cannot sign in to the workstation as an administrator, run installProcessDesigner_nonadmin.bat.

If you are not sure what your security configuration is, double-click the installProcessDesigner_nonadmin.bat file.

Attention: You must run either installProcessDesigner_admin.bat or installProcessDesigner_nonadmin.bat to complete the installation. Do not use IBM Installation Manager to install Process Designer otherwise the installation will be incomplete.

6.      Once the installation starts in command prompt it will show like below.

 

After installation successful you can see the below message on Command prompt.  

7.      When the installation completes, Process Designer is configured to connect to the IBM BPM on Cloud instance that you downloaded it from. An icon for Process Designer might be on the desktop or available from the Start menu. If you cannot find that icon, double-click the executable file from your main hard disk in a location like the following location: C:\IBM\ProcessDesigner\v8.5\eclipse.exe.

8.      Start Process Designer.

9.      Log in to Process Designer. Provide the same user ID and password that you use to sign in to IBM BPM on Cloud.

Tip: If you cannot log in to Process Designer, you might not be assigned to the IBM BPM tw_authors group. Ask your account administrator to adjust your group membership. Then try again.

10.      When you see Getting Started with IBM Process Designer, you are ready to use Process Designer.

Conclusion

Follow IBM BPM good practices for development. Also, look at the log files while you are testing to find issues in your applications and remove old instances when they are complete.

If you have difficulty with Process Designer, use the following troubleshooting information: Troubleshooting Process Designer.

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IBM Business Process Manager on Cloud Features

Introduction:

IBM® Business Process Manager on Cloud is a subscription-based business process management (BPM) cloud service. It offers visibility and management of business processes, low startup costs and fast return on investment.

Overview

IBM Business Process Manager on Cloud provides a full lifecycle BPM environment including development, test and production—with tooling and run time for process design, execution, monitoring and optimization. It is designed to enable business users to get started with process improvement quickly—often in less than 48 hours—without the need to build and maintain an IT infrastructure.

IBM Business Process Manager on Cloud is a highly available and scalable process application deployment environment secured and managed by IBM—and is security compliant with key industry standards and certifications and provides a secure single sign-on using Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML). It is available worldwide with regional access points for improved performance and 24x7 support.

IBM Business Process Manager helps eliminate typical inhibitors to starting BPM projects, such as capital expenditures, hardware availability and the skills for developing and managing systems.

There are no software licenses, hardware or installation services to purchase. IBM Business Process Manager on Cloud is available from IBM Passport Advantage® through a single monthly subscription that includes software, infrastructure and management services, and delivers the capabilities of IBM Business Process Manager Advanced.

IBM Business Process Manager on Cloud provides:

v Ease of design and deployment of process applications through an integrated design time experience.

v Governance through an integrated environment that scales smoothly from initial project to enterprise-wide program.

v Visibility through a business-led change design.

v Greater collaboration between business and IT through a unified, model-driven environment.

Ease of design and deployment of process applications

Ø  Improves reliability, performance and scalability through availability as a service on the SoftLayer cloud infrastructure.

Ø  Provides Integration Designer to more easily build efficient straight-through processes and reusable service-oriented architecture (SOA) services, and provides an environment to run customized code.

Ø  Enables multi-user teams to define a process application and offers centralized installation and tracking of process application versions.

Ø  Provides a single, Software as a Service (SaaS) entry point URL and orchestration and integration enabled by a unified BPM runtime.

Ø  Enables fast deployment in a standard format or as a customizable configuration—and provides improved support for integration scenarios by enabling site-to-site Virtual Private Network (VPN).

Governance

Ø  Provides the ability to search and share content across multiple process centers and BPM lifecycle governance.

Ø  Offers a performance data warehouse that automatically correlates performance event streams directly back to the specified metrics.

Ø  Offers a process optimizer that detects bottlenecks and violations of performance thresholds.

Ø  Enables analysts to gain insight into root causes of process performance by clicking into any part of a process.

Ø  Provides a dedicated database instance to store and retrieve data during the development phase of a business process.

Visibility

Ø  Engages process participants individually and scales to support enterprise-wide transformation.

Ø  Makes it simple to prioritize work efficiently and improves productivity.

Ø  Offers coaches that help build and foster the reuse of forms, controls, sections and templates to further streamline task completion.

Ø  Provides built-in monitoring and analytics that help optimize business processes through simulations and comparisons.

Ø  Enables candidate process optimizations to be simulated and compared against historical benchmarks.

Greater collaboration between business and IT

Ø  Allows users to see and work from the same process version, and enables you to manage change confidently.

Ø  Uses portal technology for enhanced visibility among users and offers social capabilities to engage specialists.

Ø  Provides a graphical process designer that makes it easier for team members—including non-technical users—to collaborate on process design and analysis.

Ø  Allows teams to instantly step through and review the current process design with a built-in playback feature.

Ø  Enables team-oriented development of multiple projects through concurrent editing, merge-less development, simplified snapshot versioning and back-in-time views.

Conclusion

In this article we covered IBM Business Process Manager on Cloud Features. We will see in future article how to use these features in IBM BPM on Cloud and we will implement the scenarios by using these features.

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