Even more easy process implementation with SAP NetWeaver CE7.2

[tbroek]

Last year I wrote two blogs on process implementation with SAP NetWeaver CE7.1:
- Easy process implementation with SAP NetWeaver BPM.
- Easy process implementation with SAP NetWeaver BPM / the BRM sequel.

I was wondering how things have changed with SAP NetWeaver CE7.2. So I picked up the expense demo process again and reimplemented it in CE7.2. Here are the differences:

Integration of Visual Composer.

Now it is really easy to use the Visual Composer to generate your UI’s:

When the process is modeled, create a new task and select ‘Generate UI component’.


Select Visual Composer as UI technology.


Select the relevant process context, what goes in and what goes out.


And then … the magic happens … Visual Composer is starting up within the SAP NetWeaver Developer Studio.


As a result: the generated UI.


Of course you can change this according to your needs:

Nice thing is that once you have deployed your total process and still want to change your UI, you only have to deploy the changed UI’s and not the complete process again.

Code free development.

Remember that in my 7.1 demo I still needed some Java code to assign the right value to the approval status. True in case of approval and False when rejected.
This is now possible without any line of Java code.

With an action I can assign value True to Target field Approved, which is the boolean in the process context.


And to show a real word to the end user in stead of the True or False values, you can use the dynamic expression editor.


Again a simple demo, but you can really feel the power of the Composition Environment growing with the 7.2 release.

Oh and on the process visualization screen you can now see what steps have been followed in the process with the grey diamond marks.

(This doesn’t work yet with FireFox)

Next is to explore the reporting possibilities, ERP integration, intermediate events and to start the process with a web service call.