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Team development in IBM BPM

IBM BPM provides tools to help teams share resources and collaborate effectively.

Tip: IBM Integration Designer supports a range of servers, runtime deployment environments and capabilities. Verify that you have enabled the capabilities and features for which you are licensed in order to perform tasks such as those in this section. See Business integration capabilities for information on capabilities and functions.


Work with the Process Center

The Process Center includes a repository for all processes, services, and other assets created in IBM BPM authoring environments. You can use the Process Center repository to share artifacts with other users who are developing process applications and toolkits.

The Process Center Console provides a location in which to create and maintain high-level library items such as process applications and toolkits. Administrators who do not actively work in the Designer view can use the Process Center Console to provide a framework in which BPM analysts and developers can build their processes and underlying implementations. Another primary task for administrators is managing access to the Process Center repository by setting up the appropriate authorization for users and groups.

You can use the console in a web browser as well as in Process Designer and IBM Integration Designer


Reusing artifacts

Process developers use IBM BPM to reuse existing items, both within and across process applications.

For example, if you know several services already exist that include artifacts that you and other developers need, you can access and reuse those items by including them in a toolkit. Then, from your process application, you can add a dependency to the toolkit that contains the items. You can then pick one of the existing services when you choose the implementation for an activity. The items in the toolkit can also be used by other developers working in different process applications. To learn more about toolkits, see "Managing and using toolkits" in the related links.

Tip: Toolkits can also reference and reuse services in other toolkits.

If you are working with BPEL processes or services in the Business Integration perspective of Integration Designer, you can share artifacts from one module by placing them in a library. You or others can then reuse those artifacts in other modules. To use artifacts from a library, set up a dependency from that module to the library using the Integration Designer dependency editor. You can set up dependencies on a library from any number of modules. To learn more about modules and libraries, see "Libraries" in the related links.


Create and managing groups

If you have configured IBM BPM to work with your external security provider, you can view the groups from that external provider in the Process Center console, but you cannot edit the external groups. You can, however, add users and groups from your external provider to any IBM BPM security groups created. When you create a group in IBM BPM, you can add users and groups from your external security provider to the IBM BPM group.

You can also add IBM BPM users and groups, so that you can combine accounts from different providers into one group.

In addition to managing group membership, you can designate a Team Manager Group for each group. When you have a Team Manager Group, you can establish a hierarchy for the My Team Performance scoreboard available in the Process Portal.


My Team Performance scoreboard

You can use standard scoreboards in the Process Portal to manage your business processes. The My Team Performance scoreboard shows the current status of the IBM BPM tasks for the groups for which you are designated as a team manager. You can also choose a specific business process to analyze or view data for all the processes in which the currently selected team participates.


Tracks

Tracks (formerly workspaces in WebSphere Lombardi Edition) are optional subdivisions in a process application based on team tasks or process application versions. When they are enabled, tracks allow parallel development to occur with isolation from changes in other tracks.

For example, one team can use a track to fix the current version of a process while another team builds a completely new version based on new external systems and a new corporate identity.

Tip: Tracks are used on both process applications and toolkits.


Software configuration management systems

You can use Integration Designer with software configuration management (SCM) systems.

You can view or change the preferences for available version control systems under Window > Preferences > Team. For more information about working with SCM systems, see "Using remote software configuration management systems“ in the related links.

Get started with IBM Integration Designer


Related concepts:
Service-oriented architecture
SCA
Deployment options for IBM Integration Designer
The runtime environments for IBM Integration Designer
Task flows