IBM BPM, V8.0.1, All platforms > Authoring services in Integration Designer > Developing business processes > Building BPEL processes > Defining BPEL process logic > Defining timer-driven behavior in a BPEL process

Use business calendars within a BPEL process

When it comes to modeling duration values for time-sensitive aspects of your BPEL process, you can use a business calendar to account for such variables as regular working hours, weekends, and holidays.

A period of time that does not proceed in a sequential manner is called noncontiguous. So, when we say that the business calendar can be used to model noncontiguous intervals of time, we are saying that the tool will take into consideration the fact that a timeout duration is often affected by periods when a business may be closed, or when an employee is absent.

For example, imagine putting a human task activity in a BPEL process, and then assigning it a timeout duration of two days (or 48 hours). If an instance of this BPEL process were to be instantiated on a Friday afternoon, then it would be expecting a response by Sunday afternoon: a time when the staff member to which it is assigned is away for the weekend. If however, we had modeled this timeout duration using the business calender, it would be understood that the employee would be away from the office on Saturday and Sunday, and would not expect a response to the task until Tuesday afternoon.

To use a business calendar in a BPEL process, proceed as follows:


Procedure

  1. If you have not already done so, create a business calendar or import one from WebSphere Modeler. For detailed instructions on how to do this, refer to Business calendars.
  2. Drop an activity with a time-sensitive aspect onto the canvas. Possible activities include:

    • wait,
    • invoke,
    • human Task,
    • Timeout element in an eventHandler

  3. Select the activity on the canvas, and click the appropriate tab in the Properties area. For a wait and invoke activities as well as the timeout element, this would be the Details tab, and for the invoke and human task activities, this would be the Expiration tab.

  4. From the Expression language list, select Timeout.

  5. From the Calendar Type list, select the business calendar created or imported in Step 1.

  6. Using the Timeout Duration fields, select the amount of time that this activity should wait for an action, knowing that the business calendar will compensate for all non-contiguous aspects of the interval of time.

Defining timer-driven behavior in a BPEL process

Building BPEL processes


Related tasks:
Defining timer-driven behavior in a BPEL process
Setting duration values for your human task
Configure the wait activity


Related reference:
Expiration tab: BPEL process editor


Related information:

Interface UserCalendar