Sunday, February 20, 2011

BPM Portal 11g PS3 - How To Configure Oracle BPM 11g PS3 Process Portal on Oracle WebCenter Spaces 11g PS3

If you are working with Oracle BPM 11g and Oracle WebCenter 11g technologies, definitely you will be interested to join these two together and create enterprise portal. Such integration became available with Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g PS2 release during the last year, see technical steps to make this integration work - BPM Portal - How To Configure Oracle BPM 11g Process Portal on Oracle WebCenter Spaces 11g. With Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g PS3 being released few weeks ago, there are some changes in this area - mainly configuration part, overall features are still the same as in PS2. In PS3, they moved all Oracle BPM process portal related content into WebCenter domain, before it was in SOA domain. However, build script and properties file still remains in SOA domain. Its very important now, to setup UCM and WebCenter Discussions services properly - otherwise BPM and WebCenter mapping process will fail, it was not so critical in PS2.

Ok, let's start from the beginning. You need to complete two steps described below, before you will run BPM and WebCenter integration script as per documentation (5.5.2 Enabling Process Spaces in a WebCenter Domain). For Oracle BPM and WebCenter integration in PS3, you still can reference blog mentioned above for PS2. There are few extra steps specific for PS3, I will explain these now.

First Step - Oracle BPM Spaces:

First of all, follow instructions from documentation - 5.5.2 Enabling Process Spaces in a WebCenter Domain. Step one says to extend WebCenter domain with Oracle BPM Spaces product, however this product is not on the list there in the wizard (even documentation says it should be there). In order to extend WebCenter domain with Oracle BPM, do the following - run config.sh from WebCenter domain:


Choose to extend an existing WebLogic domain:


Extend WebCenter domain:


As you can see, there is no Oracle BPM Spaces product available on the list. But, we can extend domain using extension template - select Oracle BPM Spaces extension template:


You can find this template inside WebCenter domain, common folder:


Now WebCenter domain will be extended with Oracle BPM Spaces product.

Second Step - UCM:

Keep in mind, after you will install Oracle UCM, there is no folder support by default - need to enable it. Login into Oracle Content Server console and select Admin Server:


From Oracle Content Server Admin console, select Folders option - this will list all supported folder features:


Make sure Folders_g feature is selected, this will enable folders support in UCM:


Now select Integration group:


Make sure WebCenterConfigure feature is set - otherwise will get exceptions when extending and mapping WebCenter with BPM:


Restart UCM server, you should see Contribution Folders available now in UCM:


We need to define UCM RIDC port and IP address filtering, this can be done through Oracle Enterprise Manager:


I decided to set UCM RIDC port to 7777 and allow access to all IP's *.*.*.*. You are free to choose your setting here.

We are done with the second step now.

Make sure UCM and WebCenter Discussions properties are set correctly. For example, for my environment:

#content server details
wcContentServerName=127.0.0.1
wcContentServerPort=7777 (UCM RIDC port)
wcContentSpacesRoot=/ProcessSpaces (UCM folder for BPM Process Portal)
wcContentAdminUser=weblogic (UCM admin user)


#discussion server details
wcDiscussionServerUrl=http://127.0.0.1:8890/owc_discussions
wcDiscussionAdminUser=weblogic

Here we go - bazinga! :), Process Workspace appears inside WebCenter Spaces 11g PS3. I have customized default Process Workspace view to demonstrate all powerful features - created new pages, changed components order, etc.:


Process Tracking view:


Process Calendar view:


Mash-up Task Flow that brings Employees list:


We can browse UCM repository content and read PDF documents:


Collaborate on internal forums - WebCenter Discussions:


Integrate external sites and applications:


17 comments:

ಆಶ್ವಿನ್ ಆಲ್ಮೆಡ (Ashwin Almeida) said...

Hi Andrejus,

This is a request to write a blog on 1) Integrating Spaces API with Standalaone java. What i am looking for is to create a webservice which inturn will talk with Webcenter Spaces API to create space, create new custom role, add members, assgign permissions. In Short to automate the space creation from Java class.

2) Insight into how Spaces Application roles are integrated with OPSS

Thanks
Ashwin

Andrej Baranovskij said...

Hi Ashwin,

Yes, I'm working on those topics as well. Stay tuned.

Andrejus

Unknown said...

Why in my installation of webcenter and ucm 11g ps3 "PersonalSpaces" and "ProcessSpaces" folders not exist?!

Thanks
Jahdasa

Andrej Baranovskij said...

It will not exist, it is created during WebCenter/BPM extending process.

Andrejus

Unknown said...

yes, I re-install everything from scratch, folders is created during WebCenter/BPM extending process.but in new Installation, after run ant command line, in my webcenter when i click on "Process Workspace" or "Modeling Space" error occurs.
-----------------------------------
Internal Error
If the error persists, report the problem to your administrator.

Click here to go to home
-------------------------------


and webcenter console logs
===========================
===========================
http://www13.speedyshare.com/files/27084733/download/error.txt

I am grateful to the your proposal to solve that.

Jahdasa

Unknown said...

Hi
I've gone through the install it all seems fine apart from when I try to add a task list to a page I get the following error.

Caused by: oracle.adf.controller.ControllerException: ADFC-02001: The ADF Controller cannot find '/WEB-INF/taskList-task-flow-definition.xml'

Do you know what the error means? i.e. jar missing or something wrong in the MDS. Thanks

Andrej Baranovskij said...

You can open Process Workspace successfully?

Andrejus

ಆಶ್ವಿನ್ ಆಲ್ಮೆಡ (Ashwin Almeida) said...

Hi Andrejus,

While working with spaces I found that the Space has a limitation of having only one role per user. While the underlying OPSS does not. Is there a way to hack this or a way around this. As our application business is heavily dependent on multiple roles at a space level. As of now I have a work around for this by using a new Table in Database. But this makes the design more messy and OOB usage very limited. Please let me know your views, Is there a better approach I can take for the same.

Andrej Baranovskij said...

Hi,

I'm not sure what you mean one role per user in WebCenter Space. I think user can be granted multiple roles? Can you explain your use case?

Andrejus

ಆಶ್ವಿನ್ ಆಲ್ಮೆಡ (Ashwin Almeida) said...

Hi Andrejus,

What I meant was, For a "Space" we can assign only one role for a user. If I create a new Space, create two new space roles for this space, then I can assign only one role to the user when adding member into the Space. ( Its a combo box that comes to assign).

My Use case is, "Space" symbolizes a "Publication Article", so typical roles at this space would be Author, Editor, Reviever, Chief Editor. Now If I have a user who can perform both Editor and Chief Editor tasks on this. Then how do we do it.

Also, Another space could have a different set of roles with Co-Author and Corresponding Author for another Article

Thanks,
Ashwin

Andrej Baranovskij said...

Okej, I will need to think about it :) On my todo list.

Andrejus

Unknown said...

Andrejus, Can we make BPM process portal work on WebCenter Spaces without installing UCM? I tried extending the weblogic server but I got the following error:
oracle.bpm.client.common.BPMServiceClientException: javax.naming.NameNotFoundExc
eption: While trying to lookup 'ejb.bpm/services/BPMUserAuthenticationServiceBea
n' didn't find subcontext 'ejb'. Resolved ''; remaining name 'ejb/bpm/services/B
PMUserAuthenticationServiceBean'

thanks, Vikram

Andrej Baranovskij said...

Hi,

May be, if you will modify configuration scripts. But its supposed to be installed and configured with UCM.

Andrejus

Travis said...

Hello - I am having a problem with configuring. I followed the PS3 steps of extending the domain and running the ant scripts as noted in the document.

Howver, when I restart webcenter I have the corrent spaces created but they are empty.. When I try to add a taskflow to a page, I see the new BPM taskflows but I recive the following error when I try to add to a page.

Caused By: oracle.mds.core.MetadataNotFoundException: MDS-00013: no metadata found for metadata object "/WEB-INF/processApplicationsTaskflow.xml"

Any Ideas??

Antonio Nunes said...

Hi Andrejus,
After tried this tutorial I restarted the WC_Spaces managed server and when I try to login into http://myhost:8888/webcenter it gives me an error:


<
oracle.bpm.client.common.BPMServiceClientException: javax.naming.NameNotFoundException: While trying to lookup 'ejb.bpm/services/BPMUserAuthenticationServiceBean' didn't find subcontext 'ejb'. Resolved ''; remaining name 'ejb/bpm/services/BPMUserAuthenticationServiceBean'


Do you know what's wrong?

Regards and congratulations for this useful blog.

Chris DeBracy said...

@Tim - I've seen this when the WebCenter domain was not extended with the BPM Spaces domain template.

Tamil said...

Hi,

I tried embedding the BPM worklist to an ADF Page. I'm getting a similar error as "tim" reported, when i run my page. The error is
"Caused by: oracle.adf.controller.ControllerException: ADFC-02001: The ADF Controller cannot find '/WEB-INF/taskList-task-flow-definition.xml'."

The error goes off and the application runs fine when i add the jar files - adflibTaskListTaskFlow.jar & adflibWorklistComponents.jar directly to the project's classpath.

My question is why the application is unable to find the taskflow's xml file when we have the jar files as a part of the Library 'BPM Worklist Components' and it is working when we add direct references. Please explain.

Thanks,
Tamil