Leveraging the IBM BPM Coach Framework in Your Organization

Leveraging the IBM BPM Coach Framework in Your Organization

by
Released April 2014
Publisher(s): IBM Redbooks
ISBN: None

Read it now on the O’Reilly learning platform with a 10-day free trial.

O’Reilly members get unlimited access to books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.

Start your free trial

Book description

The IBM® Coach Framework is a key element of the IBM Business Process Manager (BPM) product suite. With the Coach Framework, process authors can create and maintain custom web-based user interfaces that are embedded within their business process solutions. This ability to create and maintain custom user interfaces is a key factor in the successful deployment of business process solutions. Coaches have proven to be an extremely powerful element of IBM BPM solutions, and with the release of IBM BPM version 8.0 they were rejuvenated to incorporate the recent advances in browser-based user interfaces.

This IBM Redbooks® publication focuses on the capabilities that Coach Framework delivers with IBM BPM version 8.5, but much of what is shared in these pages continues to be of value as IBM evolves coaches in the future. This book has been produced to help you fully benefit from the power of the Coach Framework.

Table of contents

  1. Front cover
  2. Notices
    1. Trademarks
  3. Preface
    1. Authors
    2. Now you can become a published author, too!
    3. Comments welcome
    4. Stay connected to IBM Redbooks
  4. Chapter 1. The IBM Coach Framework and how it can benefit your organization
    1. 1.1 User interactions with business processes
    2. 1.2 Coaches: Custom user interfaces for business processes
    3. 1.3 Coach Views: Custom user interface components
      1. 1.3.1 Atomic Coach Views
      2. 1.3.2 Composite Coach Views
    4. 1.4 Human Services and Coaches
    5. 1.5 Basic types of Coaches
      1. 1.5.1 Task Completion Coaches
      2. 1.5.2 Dashboard Coaches
    6. 1.6 Using Coaches outside the IBM BPM Process Portal
      1. 1.6.1 Launching Coaches via URLs
      2. 1.6.2 Coaches within mobile applications
      3. 1.6.3 Coaches within JSR 286 portlets
    7. 1.7 How Coaches can benefit your organization
      1. 1.7.1 Seamless integration of UIs and process logic
      2. 1.7.2 Tailored UI components for your business
    8. 1.8 Conclusion
  5. Chapter 2. Assembling user interfaces with Coach Views
    1. 2.1 Getting started
    2. 2.2 Building a simple coach
    3. 2.3 Configuring coach views
    4. 2.4 Advanced configuration
    5. 2.5 Coach view toolkits
    6. 2.6 Creating Coach Views for business objects
    7. 2.7 Further information
    8. 2.8 Performance considerations
      1. 2.8.1 Consider the expected browser version when designing Coaches
      2. 2.8.2 Judiciously use the Table control
      3. 2.8.3 Judiciously use the Tab control
      4. 2.8.4 Minimize the number of Boundary Events
      5. 2.8.5 Minimize the size of Business Objects bound to Coach Views
      6. 2.8.6 Pick appropriate delay time for auto-complete fields
    9. 2.9 Conclusion
  6. Chapter 3. Building Coach Views
    1. 3.1 Business data
      1. 3.1.1 Accessing business data
      2. 3.1.2 Testing Coach Views with Human Services
      3. 3.1.3 Change event handler introduction
    2. 3.2 Read/Write configuration options
    3. 3.3 Complex objects
    4. 3.4 Back-end integration
      1. 3.4.1 IBM BPM Ajax call
      2. 3.4.2 Boundary Event
      3. 3.4.3 Dojo XMLHttpRequest (XHR)
    5. 3.5 DOM manipulation
      1. 3.5.1 Content box
      2. 3.5.2 Sample download
    6. 3.6 Preferred practices for developing Coach Views
      1. 3.6.1 Cascading style sheets
      2. 3.6.2 Coach View visibility
      3. 3.6.3 Providing Coach View information
      4. 3.6.4 Boundary Events
      5. 3.6.5 Base Text Direction settings considerations
      6. 3.6.6 Collaboration
      7. 3.6.7 Validation
      8. 3.6.8 Coach View configuration options
      9. 3.6.9 Label support
      10. 3.6.10 Coach Views runtime performance considerations
      11. 3.6.11 Coach Views development considerations
  7. Chapter 4. Advanced performance considerations
    1. 4.1 Design and development considerations
      1. 4.1.1 Minimize network requests to the server
      2. 4.1.2 Execute long-running calls asynchronously
      3. 4.1.3 Maximize browser concurrency
    2. 4.2 Deployment considerations
      1. 4.2.1 Use a high performing browser
      2. 4.2.2 Enable browser caching
      3. 4.2.3 Optimize network quality between browser clients and servers
      4. 4.2.4 Warm-up frequently used Coaches
      5. 4.2.5 Tune the HTTP server
  8. Chapter 5. Real world lessons from Apex Process Consultants
    1. 5.1 Apex overview
      1. 5.1.1 Apex Process Consultants
      2. 5.1.2 Evolution of Apex user interface tools
      3. 5.1.3 Apex Coach Views
    2. 5.2 Designing Coach Views for a business technical user
      1. 5.2.1 Business technical user defined
      2. 5.2.2 User interface design skill levels defined
      3. 5.2.3 Consolidate common patterns
      4. 5.2.4 Specialize by behavior
      5. 5.2.5 Clarify layout using helper views
      6. 5.2.6 Specialize by data type
    3. 5.3 Leveraging client-side data
      1. 5.3.1 Combining server-side and client-side data
      2. 5.3.2 Managing large data sets
      3. 5.3.3 Integrate directly with a system of record
      4. 5.3.4 Integrate with an external data source
    4. 5.4 Packaging for reuse
      1. 5.4.1 Modeling behavior without Apex Coach Views
      2. 5.4.2 Packaging behavior without Apex Coach Views
      3. 5.4.3 Packaging behavior with Apex Coach Views
      4. 5.4.4 Summary
    5. 5.5 Optimizing performance
      1. 5.5.1 Reduce page load time by deferring processing
      2. 5.5.2 Reduce page size by packaging Coach View source
      3. 5.5.3 Reduce page size by modularizing into templates
      4. 5.5.4 Reduce server round trips by caching templates
    6. 5.6 Conclusion
  9. Chapter 6. Real World Lessons from BP3
    1. 6.1 Responsive design
    2. 6.2 The Coach View UI Toolkit
    3. 6.3 BP3’s Brazos UI Toolkit
      1. 6.3.1 User experience matters
      2. 6.3.2 Business case
      3. 6.3.3 The implementation
      4. 6.3.4 Layout and controls
      5. 6.3.5 Example 1: Desktop, mobile, and beyond
      6. 6.3.6 Example 2: Scalability and program success
    4. 6.4 Conclusion
  10. Chapter 7. Real world lessons from EmeriCon
    1. 7.1 Rationale for EmeriConVIEWS
    2. 7.2 Authoring experience
      1. 7.2.1 Expectations
      2. 7.2.2 Creating interactions between controls
      3. 7.2.3 Creating on-page and off-page business logic
      4. 7.2.4 UI-only controls (controls with no data bindings)
      5. 7.2.5 Handling validation
      6. 7.2.6 Sampling of EmeriConVIEWS controls
    3. 7.3 Responsive UI design for Coach Pages and Coach Views
    4. 7.4 Technical considerations specifically addressed
    5. 7.5 Mixing EmeriConVIEWS with other toolkits
      1. 7.5.1 Making EmeriConVIEWS views out of regular Coach NG views
      2. 7.5.2 Using Coach subviews with EmeriConVIEWS
      3. 7.5.3 Interacting with non-EmeriConVIEWS controls
      4. 7.5.4 EmeriConVIEWS-enabling other UI toolkits
    6. 7.6 Conclusion
    7. 7.7 FAQs
  11. Related publications
    1. IBM Redbooks
    2. Online resources
    3. Help from IBM
  12. Appendix A. Additional material
    1. Locating the Web material
    2. Using the Web material
  13. Back cover

Product information

  • Title: Leveraging the IBM BPM Coach Framework in Your Organization
  • Author(s):
  • Release date: April 2014
  • Publisher(s): IBM Redbooks
  • ISBN: None