JNDI Names for the Guided Business Process Enterprise Java Beans

25-16 Modeling and Implementation Guide for Oracle Business Process Management 26 Using Approval Management 26-1 26 Using Approval Management This chapter describes the Approval Management extensions AMX to the human workflow services of Oracle SOA Suite. The human workflow service is responsible for handling all interactions with users or groups participating in the business process. It does this by creating and tracking tasks for the appropriate users in the organization. Users typically access tasks through a variety of clients, including the worklist application, email, portals, or custom applications. AMX enables you to define complex task routing slips for human workflow by taking into account business documents and associated rules to determine the approval hierarchy for a work item. Additionally, AMX lets you define multi-stage approvals with associated list builders based on supervisor or position hierarchies. You define the approval task in the Human Task Editor of Oracle JDeveloper, and associate the task with a BPEL process. For more information about human tasks, see the following chapter and appendix in Oracle Fusion Middleware Developers Guide for Oracle SOA Suite: ■ Designing Human Tasks ■ Understanding Human Task Services This chapter includes the following sections: ■ Section 26.1, Introduction to Approval Management ■ Section 26.2, Understanding Approval Management Concepts ■ Section 26.3, Designing Approval Management Tasks in Oracle JDeveloper ■ Section 26.4, Using the End-to-End Approval Management Samples ■ Section 26.5, Using Approval Management Features of the Oracle BPM Worklist and Workspace ■ Section 26.6, Using the User Metadata Migration Utility

26.1 Introduction to Approval Management

Approval Management extensions extend human workflow services with complex approval patterns. It serves as a sophisticated Assignment Manager for human workflow. Some of the key workflow features that are provided include: ■ Declarative modeling of approval management processes ■ The ability to define complex multi-stage approval with static and dynamic approval list 26-2 Modeling and Implementation Guide for Oracle Business Process Management ■ A Workflow Editor to define task parameters, assignment and routing policies, escalation and expiration settings, and notification settings ■ Policy-based task assignment, which allows users to define approval rules based on business documents ■ The ability to design a task form to render contents of the approval task and associated task operations ■ The ability to define email, voice, and Instant Messaging notifications for various participants in the workflow ■ A web-based worklist application for task assignees, process owners, and administrators ■ The ability to look up users and roles in various user directories, including Oracle Internet Directory, LDAP, and third-party directories AMX provides the following additional features: ■ Attributes derived from ADF view object in transactional applications ■ The ability to retrieve various job, position, and supervisory hierarchies from HR systems using hierarchy provider plug-ins. ■ The ability to define rules for controlling approval lists and hierarchy configurations

26.1.1 AMX Components

Figure 26–1 shows the key AMX and human task integration components. These components are described in subsequent sections of this chapter. Figure 26–1 Overall Architecture Using Approval Management 26-3 The human workflow service enables users to model human interactions as part of a business process. The human workflow service handles requests based on task and rules metadata. It consists of the following set of core services: ■ Task service ■ Task query service ■ User metadata service ■ Task metadata service ■ Identity service ■ Notification service ■ Assignment manager These services are described in detail in the chapter Designing Task Display Forms for Human Tasks in Oracle Fusion Middleware Developers Guide for Oracle SOA Suite. AMX serves as a sophisticated assignment manager within human workflow allowing you to model complex approval patterns based on business rules. The core components required for approval management include the following: ■ Human Task Editor in JDeveloper This task editor is used to define the metadata for a human task and the routing slip. The task editor lets you define such things as task parameters, outcomes, expiration and escalation, and notification settings. Some of the components added by AMX include the ability to do the following: – Define multi-stage approvals and associated approval list builders in JDeveloper. – Determine the approval hierarchy based on business documents ADF objects and business rules. This is done through Rules Designer in JDeveloper ■ Human workflow services Some of the key services that are required for handling complex approvals include the following: – Task Service - Responsible for creating and managing tasks in the dehydration store – Identity Service - Responsible for authentication and authorization of users and groups. The service can look up various user directories for authorization and contact information for users. – Task Query Service - Responsible for retrieving tasks for the web-based worklist application – Decision Service - Responsible for executing business rules related to approvals ■ Worklist Application The worklist is a web-based application that lets users access tasks assigned to them and perform actions based on their roles in the approval process. The worklist supports the following profiles: – Work assignee - An end user who is assigned a task. These users can view tasks assigned to them and perform actions, and also can define custom views and define routing rules for their tasks. 26-4 Modeling and Implementation Guide for Oracle Business Process Management – Process owner - Typically a business analyst responsible for managing certain types of approvals. These users can manage tasks for the processes they own, define approval groups, and change approval policies – Workflow administrator - Typically a system administrator responsible for managing errored tasks, and administering and monitoring work queues. This user also may use Oracle Enterprise Manager to monitor the health of the workflow services.

26.2 Understanding Approval Management Concepts

As described earlier, AMX extends human workflow services with additional functionality to handle complex approval patterns. Some human workflow concepts with which you must be familiar are the following: ■ Human Task Editor in JDeveloper ■ Task metadata task parameters, allowed operations, and patterns and routing slip ■ ADF task flow based on task forms ■ Worklist application These concepts are described in the following chapters in Oracle Fusion Middleware Developers Guide for Oracle SOA Suite: ■ Designing Human Tasks ■ Designing Task Display Forms for Human Tasks ■ Using Oracle BPEL Worklist Application The sections that follow describe new concepts introduced to handle complex approvals.

26.2.1 Task

A task handles approvals. A different task is created for each approval requirement based on the business served by it. For example, an approve new expense report task or an approve new purchase order task. Some of the standard metadata for a task include the following: ■ Task attributes such as title, outcomes approve, reject, and so on priority, expiration and others ■ Task parameters that may be based on simple primitive types, XML elements, or external entities such as ADF view objects ■ A complex approval task that may include one or more stages to identify the key milestones within the approval sequence. For more information see Section 26.2.3, Stages. ■ Expiration and escalation policy ■ Notification settings for notifying various participants ■ List builders within stages, which are based on names and expression, management chain, supervisory, position, job-level hierarchy, or approval groups. For more information, see Section 26.2.4, List Builders.