BPM Portal - How To Configure Oracle BPM 11g Process Portal on Oracle WebCenter Spaces 11g

Oracle BPM 11g is attractive product for enterprise customers, one of the reasons - it can be integrated with custom enterprise applications through portal - Oracle WebCenter Spaces 11g. I had chance to discuss with several interested customers, most of them are facing issues to setup and run both domains together - SOA/BPM and WebCenter. Time ago I have promised to discuss configuration process - Oracle BPM 11g Integration with ADF and WebCenter Suite - Quick Overview. It is very interesting and challenging topic. Chapter 3.2 Using Oracle Business Process Management Suite with WebCenter Spaces from Oracle BPM 11g Installation and Configuration guide is very abstract, without details. Its what I will try to fix today.

In order to get better understanding and to see sample screenshots of Oracle BPM 11g process portal, you can check Oracle BPM 11g User's guide chapter 9 Getting Started with Oracle Business Process Management Process Spaces (Process Spaces).

Finally, there is Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g Patching Guide, where you can find basic steps how to extend WebCenter Spaces 11g domain with Oracle BPM 11g functionality. Read section 4.6.5.3 Enabling Process Spaces in a WebCenter Domain from this guide. In few words, you need to go to Oracle BPM 11g installation folder, extract process portal package, provide valid parameter values, run script and thats it. We will look today into these properties and will see how to extend WebCenter Spaces 11g.

You can download Oracle BPM 11g and WebCenter Spaces sample configuration properties from my environment - process-portal-install.properties.

Go to Oracle SOA 11g and BPM 11g domain installation and open bpm folder:

Extract process portal package, you will find process-portal-install.properties file there:

Taskflows folder contains ADF Libraries with standard BPM 11g ADF task flows, we can copy into the same folder our task flows, if we want them to be available in WebCenter Spaces 11g process portal:

My process portal contains three ADF Libraries with custom ADF 11g task flows.

In order to make these ADF task flows visible in WebCenter Spaces 11g, go to util folder and edit DefaultGroupSpaceCatalog.xml file:

This file should include references to our custom ADF 11g task flows available in ADF Libraries. Same file contains declarations for standard BPM 11g task flows as well:

Now we are approaching towards main part of this blog post - process portal installation properties:

I will walk through and describe all important properties:

#Flag to decide whether to extend existing BPM domain or create a new one.
extendSoa=false

Default value is false, this means script will integrate Oracle SOA/BPM 11g and WebCenter Spaces 11g domains, also it will extend WebCenter Spaces 11g with standard ADF BPM 11g and custom ADF 11g task flows.

For initial script execution, always use false, once domains are integrated - always use true.

#webcenter spaces installation details
wcOracleHome=/home/redsam/Oracle/Middleware/Oracle_WC
#If extendSoa flag is set to true, then configure the below two properties to point to BPM domain
wcDomainName=wc_domain
#Flag to control whether to set domain realm password or not
wcSetDomainRealmPassword=true
#This is the password to setup trusted domains. Same password should be set on BPM domain as well
wcDomainRealmPassword=welcome1
wc.server.port=8888

Provide installation details for WebCenter Spaces 11g domain. Ignore comment in the script about extendSoa flag. If you are running script for the first time (integrating SOA/BPM 11g and WebCenter Spaces 11g domains), make sure you are providing correct WebCenter Spaces 11g domain realm password, it must be same as it is set on SOA/BPM 11g domain. This will allow to communicate both SOA/BPM 11g and WebCenter Spaces 11g domains between each other. You can set domain trust password on SOA/BPM 11g domain manually, go to domain settings and select General section from Security tab:

Scroll down to the advanced section and change SOA/BPM 11g credentials, to the same value as you are planning to use for WebCenter Spaces 11g domain:

If Oracle Universal Content Management and Discussions are not configured yet on WebCenter Spaces 11g domain, you can configure them by providing following property:

#Flag to control whether to configure services
wcConfigServices=true

If these services already in place, set this property value to false.

Properties for Oracle UCM are pretty straightforward:

#content server details
wcContentServerName=127.0.0.1
wcContentServerPort=4444
wcContentSpacesRoot=/WebCenter0809
wcContentAdminUser=sysadmin

Same for Oracle Discussions:

wcDiscussionServerUrl=http://127.0.0.1:8890/owc_discussions
wcDiscussionAdminUser=weblogic

The rest of the properties, you can find in my sample installation properties file from above.

Execute install.xml script with ant:

This will configure and integrate SOA/BPM 11g and WebCenter Spaces 11g domains together or will extend WebCenter Spaces 11g domain with custom ADF 11g task flows, bases on extendSoa property value.

After few minutes, when configuration will be finished, you should restart WebCenter Spaces 11g managed server:

BPM 11g process portal - Process Workspace becomes available in WebCenter Spaces 11g:

Our custom ADF 11g task flows are available as well and can be added from the resource catalog:

Its how standard BPM 11g functionality can be integrated and accessed from portal environment, where our custom ADF 11g applications are accessible as well.