Oracle by Example brandingCreate Your First Process Application from Scratch in Oracle Integration

section 0Before You Begin

This tutorial shows you how to create a simple process application from scratch, test it, and then activate it for end users. It takes approximately 30 minutes to complete.

Background

With Oracle Integration, you have the power to connect your cloud and on-premises applications, automate processes, build web and mobile applications, and analyze your business results—all in one place.

Let's focus on process automation. In this tutorial, you'll create a simple Travel Request Application using a pre-defined business process. A business process contains a start event, an end event, and other flow elements. A pre-defined process pattern provides you with a simplified version of the most commonly created business processes. You'll use the Start with a form business process, and edit it to build an application that is best-suited for your organizational needs. You'll then test the application and activate it to a production environment.

After you successfully activate the application to the production environment, an administrator must assign end users to the roles defined in the application process. Users can't access the application until their role is assigned.

What Do You Need?

  • Access to an instance of Oracle Integration.
  • Sign-in credentials (user name and password) assigned to the developer role. See Oracle Integration Roles and Privileges in Administering Oracle Integration.

section 1Create a Process Application

Let’s begin by creating a framework for your process application. You enter a name, description, and location for your new application.

  1. Sign in to Oracle Integration. The Welcome page opens.
  2. In the Oracle Integration navigation pane, click Processes.
  3. On the Process Applications page, click Create, and then select Create an Application.
  4. In the Create Process Applications page, enter the following values:
    • Name: Travel Request Application
    • Space: [New Space]
    • Space name: HR
    • Description: Application for users to request business travel
    Create Application dialog
    Description of the illustration createApp.png
  5. Click Create. Your Travel Request Application opens. Notice that the Application Home tab is currently displayed.

section 2Add a Business Process

You'll start your process with a form, and add swimlanes and flow elements to create a business process for requesting travel. Swimlanes are marked by horizontal lines that run across the process editor canvas. You must add all elements within the swimlanes. Roles are assigned to swimlanes to determine which members of your business organization are responsible for performing the work of your process-based application.

  1. On the Application Home tab, click Start with a form. Users will start your Travel Request Application by filling out a form.
    Application Home tab
    Description of the illustration createProcess.png
  2. In the Create Process dialog, enter the following values:
    • Name: Travel Request Process
    • Description: Business process for the Travel Request Application

    Notice that the Form pattern is already selected.

    Create Process dialog
    Description of the illustration startForm.png
  3. Click Create.
  4. On the Travel Request Process tab, double-click the gray vertical bar on the left, enter Employee as the role, and press Enter.
    travel request process tab
    Description of the illustration swimlane.png
  5. Below the Employee swimlane, click Create New Lane to add another lane.
    create new lane
    Description of the illustration addLane.png
  6. Double-click Process Owner, enter Manager as the role, and press Enter.

section 3Design the Travel Request Process

Next, start designing the business process by renaming the flow elements and adding flow elements from the Elements Palette.

  1. In the Employee swimlane, double-click the label for the Start event, and rename it Submit Travel Request. Drag and drop the End event to the Manager swimlane and rename it Travel Request Complete.
    process editor
    Description of the illustration processEditor.png
  2. Expand Human in the Elements Palette, and drag and drop the Approve task to the Manager swimlane in the process flow diagram.
    add human task
    Description of the illustration elementsPalette.png
  3. Rename User task to Approve Travel Request?
  4. Click the tip of the sequence flow between the Submit Travel Request event and the Travel Request Complete event. Drag and drop it onto the Approve Travel Request? human task.
  5. Click the Approve Travel Request? human task, click Add Sequence Flow add sequence flow icon, and drag the sequence flow onto the Travel Request Complete event.
    sequence flows
    Description of the illustration sequenceFlows.png
  6. In the application toolbar, click Save to save your changes and then click Publish. Publishing makes the current version of the application available to other team members responsible for developing the application.
    save and publish buttons
    Description of the illustration savePublish.png
  7. In the Publish Application dialog, select Make snapshot, and enter the following values:
    • Snapshot name: Initial Travel Request Application
    • Comment: Created Travel Request Application and Travel Request Process

    When you make a snapshot, a copy of the application is created at its current state. You can revert to the snapshot at any time.

    Publish Application dialog
    Description of the illustration publishApp.png
  8. Click Publish.

section 4Add a Web Form

Let’s add a web form to the business process with travel request details. 

  1. On the Travel Request Process tab, click Submit Travel Request, click Menu, and select Open Properties.
    start event open properties
    Description of the illustration openProperties.png
  2. On the General tab, enter the following values:
    • Title: Travel Request Application
    • Description: Use web form to request travel

    The title becomes the application name that your users see in the runtime environment.

  3. Next to the Form field, click Create New Web Form. Enter TravelRequestForm for the Name, select Open Immediately, and click Create.
    Create New form
    Description of the illustration createForm.png
  4. In the Web Form editor, drag and drop the Input text control from the Basic Palette to the form’s canvas.
    webform designer
    Description of the illustration webformDesigner.png
  5. Select the control you added to the canvas. Notice how the tabs in the Properties pane change to General and Styling. The General tab is selected by default. Click Name and enter Name, and then click Label and enter Name. The Name field applies to the control itself and the Label field determines its display name.
    input text control
    Description of the illustration addControl.png
  6. Drag and drop the following controls from the Basic Palette and the Advanced Palette onto the canvas and configure them as follows:
    Control Name Name Label
    Email Email Email
    Date StartDateofTravel Start Date of Travel
    Date1 EndDateofTravel End Date of Travel
    Money TravelAmount Travel Amount
    TextArea Justification Justification
    webform complete
    Description of the illustration webformComplete.png

    To reposition a control, drag its dotted handle and drop it in a new location. The controls around it adjust accordingly. As you edit, click Undo and Redo as needed.

  7. Click Save.

section 5Edit Properties for the Manager Task

You use human tasks to model how the user interacts with the application. You can configure the assignment of the human task, the form to use to display its information, the title and summary to identify it, the due date and priority, the number of reminders to send to its assignees, and the action to take when it reaches a certain deadline.

  1. On the Travel Request Process tab, click Approve Travel Request?, click Menu home icon, and then click Open Properties.
  2. On the General tab, enter the following values:
    • Form: TravelRequestForm (Click Browse to search for and select the form)
    • Presentation: Main (Default)
    • Title: Select Expression Editor. In the Expression Mode box, enter "Travel for " + TravelRequestForm.name + ", " + TravelRequestForm.justification + ", $" + TravelRequestForm.travelAmount. Click OK.
    • Task Summary: Select Expression Editor. In the Expression Mode box, enter "TravelRequestForm.justification + " " + TravelRequestForm.startDateofTravel". Click OK.
    • Due Date: 0M7d0h0m
    • Priority: High
    approve travel request properties
    Description of the illustration humantaskProperties.png
  3. Click Save.

    4. Data associations define the information passed between flow elements. When you add human tasks and start events to a business process, the data associations are automatically created. Therefore, you don't need to create any data associations for this Travel Request application. Now you can test your application and activate the application to a runtime environment, which lets you play with and refine it if needed.

section 6 Activate Your Application to a Test Environment

You can now test your Travel Request Application and step through each part of the process, fix any errors, and make sure everything functions as expected.

  1. In the application toolbar, click Test, confirm that your application is valid, and then click Activate.
    test application tab
    Description of the illustration testApp.png
  2. In the Activate to Test dialog, ensure Add Me to All Roles is selected. This option enables you to test the process without having to map users to each role.
    Activate to Test dialog
    Description of the illustration testActivate.png
  3. Click Activate.
  4. Click OK to close the information box confirming that the application was activated successfully.

section 7Try Your Application in Test Mode

You can now try your entire Travel Request Application in test mode. Because you added yourself to all roles when you activated the application, you can submit requests as an employee, and then you can also approve or reject requests as the manager.

  1. On the Test Application tab, click Try in Test Mode to open the runtime environment in testing mode to test the application version you previously activated.

    A new browser tab opens displaying the runtime environment, where end users start applications and complete assigned tasks. Notice the Testing Mode option in the toolbar, indicating test activation.

    try in test mode
    Description of the illustration testMode.png
  2. Click Travel Request Application to start the application.
  3. Complete the travel form, and click Submit.
    travel form
    Description of the illustration travelform.png
  4. Start the application again and submit a second travel request.
  5. Click My Tasks. Two tasks that begin with Travel for... are now listed on the My Tasks page.

    As a user assigned the Approver role, you have two choices to process a travel request. You can approve it or you can reject it. Let's test each option.

    tasks page
    Description of the illustration tasks.png
  6. Select the first task and click Approve. You completed the task so it gets removed from your list of tasks.
    task details pane
    Description of the illustration approvetask.png
  7. Select the next task and this time click Reject. You don't approve of this travel. You completed the task so it's removed from your list.
  8. Click Finish Testing finish testing icon, and click Home home icon.
    home page
    Description of the illustration testMode.png
  9. In the Oracle Integration navigation pane, click Processes.
  10. On the Process Applications page, click Travel Request Application to open your customized application again.
    return to application
    Description of the illustration travelApp.png
  11. Click Publish.
  12. In the Publish Application dialog, select Make snapshot, and enter the following values:
    • Snapshot name: Completed Travel Request Application
    • Comment: Completed Travel Request Application
  13. Click Publish.

section 8Activate Your Process Application

Now that the application is good to go, you can activate the application and make it available to the end users.

  1. Click Activate.
    activate app
    Description of the illustration deployApp.png
  2. On the Activation tab, click Activate new version.
  3. In the Activate Application to My Server dialog, click Validate.
    select application
    Description of the illustration selectApp.png
  4. For the Validation Result step, ensure that the application validated successfully, and click Options.
  5. For the Activation Options step, enter 1.1 for the Revision id, select Make Default, leave the other fields as is, and click Activate.
    activation options
    Description of the illustration deployment.png
  6. Ensure that the application is activated successfully, and then click Finish.

section 9What's Next?

Congratulations! You completed all the tasks and successfully created and activated your first process application from scratch. However, for the application to be available to your end users, roles need to be assigned to the users. Roles define what end users can do, such as whether they can start the application and what tasks they’re assigned. After your application has been activated to a production server and is ready for use, contact your administrator to assign roles for the application.

more informationWant to Learn More?