Creating a Data Source from Process Context for Reporting Purposes

Hi All,

It is not an unusual requirement for the need of creating a Report or a Dashboard based on the data residing in the process-context of a BPM Process.

It is not a lesser known fact that this is achieved by using a Reporting Activity in the BPM at design-time.

The question arises that the reports and any other type of data interpretation techniques require a data-source to function. The Reporting Activity does this job for us.

There are 4 basic steps to achieve this:

1.Create a BPM Process
2.Create a Reporting Activity in the BPM Process and pass the data required in the datasource

3.Create a datasource and integrate it into the Reporting Activity.

4.Deploy.

Lets see these steps in detail.

1.Create a BPM Process:

Refer this document I wrote for creating a BPM Process:   http://scn.sap.com/docs/DOC-47005

2. Create a Reporting Activity in the BPM Process:

After adding, it should look like this:

Open the properties of the reporting Activity:

3.Create a datasource and integrate it into the Reporting Activity

In the ‘Reporting’ tab of the properties, select ‘New’ to create a new datasource:

Name the Datasource and click on ‘Next’:

Select the data for the datasource and click on ‘Finish’:

The datasource is now created.

In the ‘Input Mapping’ tab of the properties of the Reporting Activity, map the process context data to the datasource:

4. Now, build and deploy the BPM DC.

Accessing the datasource:

For example, if we take Visual Composer into consideration, we can access the datasource as follows:

Log in to Visual Composer (Web) –    http://<hostname>:<port>/VC

Click on ‘New’ and create a new model DC:

Once this DC is created, click on ‘Search’ on the extreme right and select ‘BI Data Sources’. Your datasource should be visible here as shown:

Once this is imported into the VC development component, we can use it for any data interpretation purposes.

This worked for me.

However, if I did something wrong or miscommunicated something, please let me know and help me improve.

Hope this helps in some way.

Thanks.

Sid