Can BPM maintain flow across different applications

Question

Hello,
I have a requirement where I have to maintain the business flow across different applications(Siebel CRM, Oracle Financials and third party applications) with out the end user knowing.
Is it possible with BPM to navigate users from one application to another application (CRM Application-> Third party Application -> Financials)? If there is a solution availabe with BPM or a different application please provide the same doc. Appreciate your help.
Regards,
Jay

Answer 1

Hi,
Yes. Oracle BPM can maintain a flow across multiple applications without the end user knowing. It is something it was built to do.
First, applications like the ones you mentioned have an API (typically web service today but older applications exposed their API as Java POJOs, EJBs, COM, etc.). For Oracle BPM to access the applications, you need to expose the API in Oracle BPM's catalog. Customers that have a service bus expose the application APIs in the service bus and then Oracle BPM catalogs the service bus proxy services. Customers that do not have a service bus can expose the application APIs directly in Oracle BPM's catalog. Either way will work.
Second, you'd design a process with a series of Interactive (human activities) and Automatic (activities that invoke the components that in turn invoke the APIs for your applications without human intervention). You'd add something called instance variables that carry the information throughout the life the process for each work item instance. Interactive activities are placed into roles with a name associated with them (e.g. CSR or Manager) so the work done in each activity is done by the right type of person. Interactive activities can be set up where the work item instance goes to a specific person instead of everyone in the role where the activity is located (e.g. send the instance to the CSR that talked to the customer last time).
Third, at runtime as each work item instance is created (e.g. "Order 227") in the process the work item instance flows to one of the process's Interactive or Automatic activities. If it flows into an Interactive (human) activity, the end user assigned to the role where the activity is located clicks on an item in their web based Oracle BPM WorkSpace's inbox for the specific work item instance that they are interested in working on (again - perhaps "Order 227"). Once clicked by the end user, a UI presentation (either built using Oracle BPM's WYSIWYG presentation editor or a JSP) shows the work that needs to be done specifically by that end user. The UI presentation is already populated with the information gathered from a database or a previous API call from an Automatic activity. All this is done without end users having to cut out of one application and then paste into another application's screen - the right contextual information is sent to the right person at the right time. Once the end user finishes their manual task, the work might flow to an Automatic task that invokes another applicaiton's API automatically from the logic and variable information gathered in earlier activities in the process.
All this is done without the end users knowing that they are flowing through multiple applications to get their work done.
Hope this helps,
Dan