Introduction to the BPL Editor

Accessing the Editor

To access this page:

1. Log in to the Management Portal.

2. Click Interoperability > Build > Business Processes.

3. Click Open in the New UI.

You can also access the BPL Editor from the Production Configuration page.

Areas of the Page

When you display the BPL Editor, it shows the last BPL you opened in this namespace, if any. This page has the following areas:

• The top of the page displays options you can use to create and open BPL processes, compile the currently displayed BPL, add activities to the diagram, undo and redo changes, and so on.

• By default, the left area displays the BPL diagram. You can also display the Tree View.

• The right area displays the Inspector, which contains several sections applicable to the currently displayed BPL.

BPL Diagram

A BPL diagram is the editable, graphical representation of the logic defined by the business process. The following is an example.

A BPL business process consists of a connected set of activities, shown as different shapes in the diagram. Activities can use values received by the BPL and make decisions based on them, they call other business components, they can manipulate data, and they can call custom code. The process of creating a BPL business process consists primarily of defining the activities it includes and connecting those activities.

Several kinds of BPL activities are displayed as their own subdiagrams. The BPL Editor indicates this visually; for example, the foreach element in the previous diagram shows a symbol in the bottom of its shape. To see the subdiagram, you need to drill down. Alternatively, you can use the Tree View, which displays the entire BPL at once.

Tree View

When you display the BPL Editor, normally you see only the BPL diagram.

If you click the Show Tree button, the BPL Editor also displays the diagram as a tree. For example:

You can expand this tree to see all the logic in the BPL. For example, we can expand the foreach element, as follows:

To hide the Tree View, click its Hide button.

You can also resize the Tree View by dragging the divider on its right.

Inspector

By default, the right area of the page displays the Inspector, which consists of the following expandable sections:

• General—contains settings for the overall definition of the BPL business process. See Setting General Properties of the BPL Business Process.

• Context—enables you to define the context object for this BPL business process.

• Activity—contains settings for the selected item in the BPL diagram; see Adding Activities to a BPL Diagram.

• Preferences—contains settings pertaining to the appearance of the BPL diagram. See Setting BPL Diagram Preferences.

To hide the Inspector, click its Hide button. To display the Inspector, click the Show button.

You can also resize the Inspector by dragging the divider on its left.

See Also

• Creating BPL Business Processes

• Editing a BPL Diagram