Designing processes - EMC Community Network

Designing the Process
Process variables can be simple types (Boolean or string) or can be structured data types that were
selected for reporting when they were created. To expose this variable and use it to generate reports,
select the This variable can be used to generate reports checkbox in the Data tab of the activity.
Synchronizing with the BAM database
If you change the process data in a process, there is the danger that these changes are not reflected in
the BAM database structure. Ensure that any changes to the business data that you are monitoring have
been updated in the BAM database. The Update BAM Data Definitions page enables you to update
selected process data from Process Builder with the existing reporting data in the BAM database. This
ensures that there is consistency between the structure of the data in Process Builder and the structure
in BAM. This option updates the BAM process data with the process data that you select in the
Update BAM Data Definitions page.
Select Tools > Update BAM Data Definitions to use the Update BAM Data Definitions page.
Reporting on data in an external database to BAM
BAM reports on information in processes automated by the Process Engine. A common question is
how to report on data that is contained in an external database. The best way to do this is to create a
small process that makes this data available to BAM. You can configure a Database Read activity to
retrieve data from the database outside of Documentum and then mark the data elements for reporting.
This creates a simple process with one automatic activity that retrieves the specified data and sends
reporting information to BAM.
Note: Because Process Builder does not support a process with a single activity, you must add one
more dummy activity to the process. That activity is an automated activity in which the method
is dm_noop_auto_method.
Process design and performance
This section describes some practices that could improve performance.
Choose one automatic performer
To improve the performance of automatic activities in your process, make one user (or a small set
of users) the performer of all the automatic activities. For example, if you define a user, such as
auto_executor, and make that user the performer of all the automatic activities, the runtime execution
of these automatic activities increases considerably.
For security reasons, only a superuser can select a specific user as a performer for an automatic
activity in Process Builder.
EMC Documentum xCelerated Composition Platform Version 1.6 Best Practices Guide 59