Plan to use process portals
After you have configured WebSphere Portal to use WebSphere Process Server and enabled business process integration, the pages to manage business processes (My Processes) and human tasks (My Tasks) are available in the portal. The portlets on these pages give you access to following functions:
- My Processes
Work with process templates, process instances, and task templates. You can start new instances of process templates and analyze existing process instances. You can also terminate and delete existing processes.
- My Tasks
View and manage the tasks assigned to you. View the details of a task, claim a task, and open a claimed task to work on it.
Mappings between the tasks on the process server and task pages on the portal server allow you and other administrators to assign tasks to pages other than the default Task page provided by WebSphere Portal.
When business process integration is enabled and running in the portal deployment, users can work with specific tasks by using the generic portlets provided by WebSphere Portal or custom portlets that have been developed by the your integration developers or a third-party developer. During the development phase of your business processes, consider the following questions:
- Which portlets will provide the best user interface to the business process applications: custom-made portlets or the generic portlets provided by WebSphere Portal?
Consider using the portal-provided generic portlets during the initial development of business processes to get prototypes up and running quickly. After the business process applications becomes stable, you can develop custom portlets to refine the user interfaces of the process applications.
- What is the most effective mapping between the tasks and task pages?
- How will we use the default task page?
- Will we need to define special-purpose pages dedicated to specific tasks?
- What is the initial set of dedicated task pages?
- What additional portlets will users need on special-purpose task pages to give them the information they need to complete their tasks?
Remember to consider portlets that will provide complementary information and that can be placed on the same task page. Avoid forcing users to navigate to other pages.
Parent topic
Planning integration with WebSphere Process Server
Previous topic:
Understanding configuration options for process integration