A Sample Solution for Records Management with Process Choreography

Chapter 3. Architectural decisions 41

3.3 Information life-cycle management solution

This section explains the major features and components of the application. We

divide the discussion into the following two sections:

򐂰 Solution description

򐂰 Solution components

3.3.1 Solution description

This section describes the high-level overview of the developed solution for our

information life-cycle management sample application. The overall flow of the

application enables the users to work with report creation and manage

information during the life cycle of the reports.

The solution consists of the following components:

򐂰 Report life-cycle management

򐂰 Report repository search and manipulation application

򐂰 Audit information application

Report life-cycle management is the primary flow of the application, as shown in

Figure 3-5 on page 42.

Note: As previously mentioned, this ILM solution is a partial solution for the

analyst reporting use case described previously. Figure 3-5 represents the

basic business process functions enabled by our implementation of the ILM

solution.

42 Records Management and Process Choreography

Figure 3-5 High-level flow of application

As shown in Figure 3-5, there are two user roles for the application, the

supervisor and analyst:

򐂰 The supervisor creates or initiates requests for report creation and then

approves or rejects the report when it is finished.

򐂰 The analyst is responsible for creating the report.

An extremely important role, although not shown in the figure, is that of the

records administrator. This role is responsible for performing audits and ensuring

the overall integrity of the records management process.

Create report request

Supervisor Analyst

Self-assign report request

Create report

Complete request and

assign report in it

Request for approval

Self-assign report approval

request

Approve request

Chapter 3. Architectural decisions 43

3.3.2 Solution components

The application is hosted on a WebSphere Portal server. All user access is

performed with the WebSphere Portal server using a Web browser. The front-end

portions of the application are arranged into separate portal pages with various

portlets assigned to them. Figure 3-6 shows the organization of the pages that

we use.

Figure 3-6 Portlet pages organization

The primary menu, seen through a Web browser showing the high-level tasks,

can be seen in the WebSphere Portal page shown in Figure 3-7 on page 44.

ITSO Sample

ILM Tasks

ILM Reports

ILM Records

ILM Audit

ILM – Create Assignment Portlet

ILM – Analyst Report Tasks Portlet

ILM – Document Details portlet

ILM – All Documents portlet

ILM – Published Reports portlet

ILM – Records Admin

ILM – Records Search portlet

ILM – Audit Search

ILM – Audit Result

44 Records Management and Process Choreography

Figure 3-7 WebSphere Portal page

Table 3-2 lists the individual portlets that will be created and their functions.

Table 3-2 Portlets and their functions

Portlet Function

CreateAssignment This portlet is used by a supervisor to create a new report

creation activity (report request).

AnalystReportTasks This is a list of unassigned report activities. For the

analyst, this list represents the newly created report

requests or rejected reports; while for supervisors, this list

represents the completed activity waiting for approval.

DocumentDetails This portlet shows the content details of the report that is

selected in the All Documents portlet.

AllDocuments This portlet lists all reports that are created by the user.

PublishedReports This portlet shows all published reports or content of a

specific report when it is selected from the list.

RecordsAdmin This portlet allows manipulation of a single record from

the record management system. The record here is the

report document ID shown in the All Documents list.

RecordsSearch This portlet enables searching and listing a set of records

from the record management tools.

AuditSearch This portlet enables searching of specific audit

information from the record management tools.

AuditResult This portlet displays the result of the AuditSearch portlet.