IBM BPM, V8.0.1, All platforms > Create processes in IBM Process Designer > Create user interfaces for business processes

Coaches

Coaches are the user interfaces for human services.

There are two types of user interfaces for human services: dashboards and task completion. To build either type of user interface for human services, you use Coaches.

When a Coach is a dashboard user interface, users can run it as a stand-alone user interface at any time. The users access it through the Process Portal. For information about dashboards, see Manage processes and workload using dashboards in Process Portal. Users can also access it as a WebSphere portlet. For information, see Generate portlets for human services exposed as dashboards.

When a Coach is a task completion user interface, it is part of the human service flow. At run time, when the flow enters the Coach, the user sees the user interface that is defined for that Coach. The user interface consists of HTML code that is displayed in a web browser. The flow leaves the Coach when a boundary event occurs. A Coach can have multiple exit flows with each one associated with a different boundary event.

Coaches contain one or more Coach Views. The Coach Views provide the user interface elements and layout for the Coach. Each Coach View can contain one or more other Coach Views, which creates a parent-child relationship between these Coach Views. At run time, the parent Coach View is rendered as a <div></div> tag that contains a nested <div></div> tag for each child Coach View. Each Coach View can also have a binding to a business object, CSS code to control its visual layout, and JavaScript to define its behavior.

Coach Views are reusable so you can create a library of common user interfaces and behavior. You can combine these common user interfaces to rapidly develop new Coaches. The Coaches toolkit that is included with IBM BPM contains a set of common user interfaces that are called stock controls.

You can include these stock controls when you are creating your own Coach Views.

To maintain compatibility with earlier Coaches, IBM BPM supports Heritage Coaches. A Heritage Coach has the technology and architecture of a Coach in versions of IBM BPM before V8.0. A human service can have Coaches or Heritage Coaches. You can continue to use and maintain Heritage Coaches, but use Coaches for new user interfaces for services.

Create user interfaces for business processes


Related concepts:
Difference between Coaches and Heritage Coaches
Building Heritage Coaches
Coach Views


Related tasks:
Developing reusable Coach Views