Automate Forms Management in an SOA Solution Using Lotus Forms 3.0, WebSphere Portal 6.0, and WebSphere Process Server 6.0: Create a Human Task (The Sphere Journal, May 2009)

Denis Kulagin, architect, Ascendant Technology, LLC

May, 2009

Learn how to add human interactions to a form-based business process. You’ll see how to enable the business process to populate the form with data coming from a business process, reach back to the user through the portal to request additional data or updates, and assign tasks to different groups of users or individual users.

Key Concept

Most business processes involve acting on some sort of data — customer contact details, product information, inventory statuses, and the like. Structuring and validating the data is critical to enabling software applications and people to work with it throughout a business process. Data must be structured for business processes to consume it. Data pieces must be clearly defined because decisions made on a business process often rely on that data.

Electronic forms collect structured information for further processing and free people from the routine work of manually processing paper forms. Thus, they play a key role in enabling large enterprises to move to automated business management. They also contribute to a green environment by reducing paper usage. Combined with business process management, portal technologies, and service-oriented architecture (SOA), electronic forms can enhance a business’s agility and speed.

In a previous article, I showed you how to use a set of IBM products and tools to collect information from portal users in an electronic form and then move that information through a business process workflow. Now I’ll take you through the steps to add human interaction to the process. You do this through the creation of HumanTasks. In my sample scenario, the form is submitted to a human editor for approval. I will create a HumanTask in the business process, assign this task to the editor, and create a portal client for the editor to work on this task.

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