IBM Workflow Process Service

Workflow Process Service is a process capability with a smaller footprint and resource usage for developing, testing, and running workflow processes that orchestrate human tasks and services.. The service is offered as part of IBM Cloud Pak® for Business Automation.

Workflow Process Service provides an entry point to the IBM Cloud Pak for Business Automation, with the following advantages:
  • A fit for purpose BPMN process capability with a smaller footprint and fewer dependencies to create, deploy, use, and manage processes that require only process features and do not require case features.
  • The ability to use process skills that developers are familiar with from Business Automation Workflow.
  • OpenShift Container Platform (OCP) features of auto-scaling, High Availability (HA), and multi-zone regions (MZR).

You can try out Workflow Process Service by setting up and using Workflow Process Service Trial on the Docker environment or the Podman environment. Download the trial from this site: Workflow Process Service Trial

Workflow Process Service provides an authoring environment and a runtime environment, each deployed as a single container. It provides an end-to-end development and production environment, where you can do the following tasks.
  • Install and configure a single-container authoring and a single-container runtime environment.
  • Develop your process workflows iteratively in an authoring environment that is fully integrated with a playback runtime environment.
  • Install your workflows to a runtime environment.
  • View, manage, and administer your running workflows. Optionally, configure Elasticsearch in a separate container to access more features.
  • Work on your tasks and manage them.
  • Gain insights into your business by analyzing your business data.
The diagram shows the authoring and server environments of Workflow Process Service.

Workflow Process Service Authoring

Workflow Process Service provides a seamless authoring experience to iteratively develop workflow automations. Using Business Automation Studio, you can do the following tasks.

  • Create and manage your workflow automations and automation services. Create your processes, user interfaces, and service integrations in the designer.
  • Create and publish workflow automation services to Business Automation Studio and reuse the published automation services in your process workflows.
  • Develop your workflows iteratively by testing in the integrated playback runtime environment during development. You can further test your user scenarios by interacting with tasks in Workplace.
  • Configure the events that you want to capture in IBM Business Automation Insights and test the output.
  • Access the process apps that are running in the playback server from Process Admin Console.
When your workflow automation is ready for further testing, staging, or production, you can install it to the runtime by using the operations REST APIs. For more information, see Operations REST APIs.
Note:
  • REST operations that use content types file or string/binary are not supported.
  • Workflow automations and versions in Business Automation Studio correspond to process apps and snapshots in the APIs and Process Admin Console.
  • Workflow Process Service supports external content integration, but does not include local document support.

Workflow Process Service Runtime

Workflow Process Service provides a runtime environment that can support a wide range of process workflows and service orchestrations. You can configure a runtime environment for testing, staging, or production.

You must provision a PostgreSQL database to manage persistent storage.

Workflow Process Service Runtime provides capabilities to run, manage, and administer your workflows, work with tasks, and view business metrics.
  • Install your process app snapshots to the runtime environment and administer running processes by using the operations REST APIs. See Operations REST APIs.
  • Interact programmatically with processes and tasks by using runtime APIs. See Process REST APIs.
  • Manage and complete your work in Workplace, which offers you a seamless and consolidated user experience to organize, prioritize, track, and complete different types of work in the same application. To access the full text search, advanced filtering functions, and the Teams dashboard in Workplace, you need Workflow Process Service to be configured with Elasticsearch. See Managing work.
  • Gain business insights with IBM Business Automation Insights, which captures events that are generated by your workflow, aggregates them into business-relevant KPIs, and displays them on meaningful dashboards so that you can analyze your business data. See IBM Business Automation Insights.
  • View, manage, and administer process apps in the Process Admin Console. You can administer and configure runtime settings for process apps that are installed on a workflow server. For more information, see the Process Admin Console topics under Administering.