BPM Workspace/Composer Login Error ORABPEL-10585

If you are facing trouble logging into BPM workspace or composer, this post could help save you some time.

First check if the error message in your SOA managed server diagnostic log after the failed login is the following;

javax.security.auth.login.LoginException: Operation exception.
at oracle.bpm.papi.ora.mgr.OrganizationManager.lookupParticipant(OrganizationManager.java:61)
at oracle.bpm.papi.ora.mgr.OrganizationManager.lookupParticipant(OrganizationManager.java:41)
..........
..........
Caused by: fuego.papi.OperationException: Operation exception.
... 69 more
Caused by: ORABPEL-10585

Service error.
Internal Error; Service error occurs in IdentityService in method lookupUser.
Refer to the log file that is configured for oracle.soa.services.identity for more details on this error and contact Oracle Support Services

If this is not the error in your logs, you may look at the blog post here for other options to see if that helps resolve your problem.

Now, let us look at the fix.

1. Login to the EM (Enterprise Manager) console
2. Expand SOA and Right click on soa-infra
3. Goto Administration -> System MBean Browser
4. Minimize the tree structure (com.bea) to view Application Defined MBeans section
5. Expand oracle.as.soainfra.config -> Server:SOAServerName -> SoaInfraConfig
6. Select soa-infra
7. Update the property ServerURL with a valid URL [Ensure that the hostname here matches your environment hostname. Tip: It should be same as the front end host]
eg., http://hostname:port
8. Click on Apply

Restart your SOA managed server. You should now be able to successfully login to your BPM Workspace or Composer

Solving BPM PS6 (11.1.1.7) Webform Rendering Issue

When the server host name is not properly set during SOA installation, BPM picks up the default server URL while rendering webforms. This could cause rendering issue since webform expects full server hostname (localhost or short server hostname will not render the webform content).

Check out here for further configuration required for BPM PS6 WebForms...

Often the easier fix would be to manually update the host name in the enterprise manager for each of the human tasks in the BPM process. But that could be time consuming especially if you have many human tasks in your process and redo this every time you redeploy the process.

To have a permanent fix in place so that all human task webforms in future use the fully qualified hostname, set the FusionAppsFrontEndHostUrl property in your soa-infra as shown below;

1. Login to EM console as administrator (eg. weblogic)

2. Expand SOA, Right-Click on soa-infra -> choose SOA Administration -> Workflow Properties

3. In the resulting "Workflow Notification Properties" screen click "More Workflow Notification Configuration Properties..."

4. Enter the required fully qualified URL in the "FusionAppsFrontEndHostUrl" property in the following format;
*=http://hostname:port

5. Click on "Apply" and save the settings.

Henceforth, all BPM deployments would make use of the FusionAppsFrontEndHostUrl to render the forms.

BPM 11.1.1.7 Composer Web Form Creation

Web Forms are one of the most anticipated features delivered as part of the latest Oracle BPM PS6 release (11.1.1.7). What is so special about it? Well, until PS5 Oracle BPM supported only one form of human task UI development - the out of the box ADF style of development which required the use of Oracle JDeveloper IDE and in complex scenarios invariably required the help of IT dept.

Starting PS6, Oracle BPM supports Web Forms which is a welcome feature especially for business analysts/process owners who have very high business process knowledge but little IT/development. Oracle BPM PS6 allows business users to create & implement a complete end-to-end business process (including user task UIs) from a blank canvas via their web browsers.

However, while trying to create a web form from BPM composer, you may encounter the following error;

Error getting form: OrderProcessForm
Caused by: Could not instantiate form: got wrong status=500

This is just a configuration issue which can be resolved in a jiffy.

Just make a note of the fully qualified machine hostname where BPM PS6 is installed.
For eg., sathyam-lap.oracle.com

1. Login to WebLogic console [http://sathyam-lap.oracle.com:7001/console]
2. Expand Environment and choose Servers from the "Domain Structure" panel

3. Click on the managed server where SOA/BPM is installed from the list of servers [Generally, soa_server1 on port 8001]
4. In the "Settings for soa_server1" page, choose "Protocols" tab from top menu & "HTTP" tab in the sub menu bar [You can update this for all servers to keep the URLs uniform]
5. Update the "Frontend Host" entry with the fully qualified machine hostname

Now, login to BPM composer and try to create/access your webform and it must be rendered properly.
Note that you must always access all server URLs using the fully qualified hostname
eg., http://sathyam-lap.oracle.com:8001/bpm/composer

BPM 11g Workspace - Initiator Task: No Applications Found

Of late, I have been seeing users getting this issue of not being able to initiate the BPM process due to non-availability of the process under the "Available Processes" panel in the BPM workspace.

This issue is not specific to Initiator tasks and can occur for any human task in a BPM process. Note that this issue is tough to reproduce and is very intermittent.

Not to worry. It is curable ;)

Check 1:

Ensure that the role mapping is done for the BPM application roles in the BPM workspace

Check 2:

1. Login to EM console as administrator
2. Choose your BPM application under soa-infra -> default
3. On the RHS, click on the appropriate human task under the "Component Metrics" section
4. On the resulting screen, go to Administration tab
5. Check if taskform URI information is available

More often, this information might be missing and you may have to manually configure this;

Sample information is provided below (Click on the "Add URI" button)

Application Name: worklist
Host Name: localhost (provide appropriate hostname information here)
HTTP Port: 8001 (SOA managed server port)
HTTPS Port: 0
URI: /workflow/ManageOrderUI/faces/adf.task-flow?_id=ManageOrderTask_TaskFlow&_document=WEB-INF/ManageOrderTask_TaskFlow.xml

URI information is just an example. Update it to match your ADF taskflow definition.

Hope this helps in the resolution of the issue.

Unable to Login BPM Workspace/Composer

Last week I installed BPM PS6 on one of my local servers. Since it was intended to be a development environment, I configured my WebLogic domain to have a single server which would double up as my SOA/BPM server in additions to its Admin server capabilities.

After a clean install, while trying to login as weblogic [the administrator user] in to the BPM workspace or BPM composer, these applications wouldn't allow access throwing "Login Error" & "Authentication Error" respectively. However, I was successfully able to login to the WebLogic console & EM with same credentials.

On investigating the server logs, the following errors were reported by the managed server;

[APP: BPMComposer] BPM-80102: Error while creating the security service.  Cause: Identity Service Configuration error.[[ Identity Service Configuration has error.
Please refer to the identity service configuration guidelines and correct the Identity Service configurations. Contact Oracle Support Services if error is not fixable.
javax.security.auth.login.LoginException: BPM-80102: Error while creating the security service.  Cause: Identity Service Configuration error.
........
........
........
Caused by: ORABPEL-10555
Identity Service Configuration error.
Identity Service Configuration has error.
........
........
Caused by: oracle.bpel.services.workflow.client.WorkflowServiceClientException: javax.xml.ws.WebServiceException: oracle.fabric.common.PolicyEnforcementException: PolicySet Invalid: WSM-02557 oracle.wsm.policymanager.accessor.BeanAccessor The documents required to configure the Oracle Web Services Manager runtime have not been retrieved from the Policy Manager application (wsm-pm), possibly because the application is not running or has not been deployed in the environment. The query "&(policysets:global/%)(@appliesTo~="WS-Client()")" is queued for later retrieval. WSM-02557 oracle.wsm.policymanager.accessor.BeanAccessor The documents required to configure the Oracle Web Services Manager runtime have not been retrieved from the Policy Manager application (wsm-pm), possibly because the application is not running or has not been deployed in the environment. The query "/policies/oracle/no_authentication_client_policy" is queued for later retrieval.

Clearly the error states an issue with the policy manager under OWSM (Oracle WebServices Manager).

If this is not the error message in your logs, you may review the blog post here to see if that helps.

Solution:

Step 1:

1. Login to WLS console (http://hostname:port/console) as weblogic [Admin user]
2. Under the Data Sources, ensure that the mds-owsm jdbc data source is targeted at the SOA managed server [If you have a single server install verify that it is targeted at AdminServer]. If not, edit the data source & update targets

Step 2:

1. Under the "Deployments" section of WLS console, make sure that the wsm-pm enterprise application is running. If the deployment state is other than "Active", there is a good posibility that this application is not targeted on the SOA managed server.
2. Solution here is to target this application manually on the SOA server. To do this, click on the wsm-pm application -> Go to Targets tab -> choose the wsm-pm root component -> Click on "Change Targets" -> Check the SOA managed server (or AdminServer in case of single server install) and choose "Yes".

Now, you should be able to successfully login to the BPM workspace & BPM composer applications.

JDeveloper SOA Deployment Error: Unable to find a WSDL that has a definition for service

This is one of the strange errors that I encountered recently. While trying to deploy a SOA project, JDeveloper reported the following error;


Received HTTP response from the server, response code=500
Error deploying archive sca_CreditCardProcess_rev1.0.jar to partition "default" on server soa_server1 [http://bpmsrv.example.com:8001] 
HTTP error code returned [500]
Error message from server:
There was an error deploying the composite on soa_server1: Deployment Failed: Unable to find a WSDL that has a definition for service {http://xmlns.oracle.com/bpmn/bpmnProcess/CreditCardProcess}CreditCardProcess.service and port CreditCardProcessPort.  Please make sure that the port attribute for the binding defined in the composite file is correct by checking the namespace, service name, and port name.  In addition, check that the WSDL associated with the binding namespace is imported and currently reachable (check the import nodes at the top of the composite file). Finally, validate the HTTP proxy settings for the server..

Check server log for more details.
Error deploying archive sca_CreditCardProcess_rev1.0.jar to partition "default" on server soa_server1 [http://bpmsrv.example.com:8001] 
####  Deployment incomplete.  ####

The error reported in JDeveloper is very misleading and it took me significant amount of time & effort to figure out the actual root cause. This was particularly strange in my case because the code was deployed multiple times successfully without errors in my dev environment.

Root Cause:

On closer observation into the soa server logs, I noted that a webservice reference was not "reachable" by the SOA composite and hence this error. This had nothing to do with the "exposed" service, its port or definitions whatsoever.

Fix:

In my case, the referenced webservice's hostname mapping was missing in my "new" environment because of which the SOA composite was unable to find the WSDL during deployment. It is fair for JDeveloper not to complain because it usually runs on client machine/laptop where the hostname mappings might exist. The deployment error is thrown at the server side and hence the key is to analyze the SOA server logs to figure the actual issue for a fix.

Hope this will help users with similar issues.

BPM & Case Management Exemplified

Trigger for this post has been the recent buzz about Case Management. Where does case management fit in an enterprise? Is this a new invention? - certainly not.

Successful businesses & their strategies have always been agile & unstructured - it was the information technology which was not! BPM was a technology that came much closer to business - addressing business process automation & promising agility on demand.

Technically speaking, Case Management has been around for a long time (How different was an insurance claim or loan process today than it was in the 80's?) - this time only IT trying to frame standards & techniques around it - obviously bringing along 'must-have' competitive advantages to the business such as speed, performance & visibility.

More and more businesses are unanimously voting up for a BPM initiative at their organizations. Traditional IT development/programming model doesn't stand a chance to win 'budgets' from the LOBs. This change is owing to the fact that a lot of organizations realize that all IT initiatives must equip them with "Competitive Advantage" allowing quick 'Go-To Market', better response to competition moves, align with ever-changing business strategies, visibility into key business performance indicators etc.. to name a few.

What better solution than a Business Process Management (BPM) initiative. There are plenty of BPM vendors in the market which an Organization can evaluate for a better fit.

But what is case management?

Case Management has its roots in BPM.

A business process which cannot be repeatable in all situations - and the process flow/steps purely depend on the judgement/decision of a human resource (knowledge worker). Plenty of industries/domains such as medical, healthcare, legal, financials largely depend on skilled knowledge workers (doctors, physicians, lawyers, investigator) to make decisions on a situation/scenario where there could be process flow steps that are 'unknown' at design time (unlike a BPM process where the process flow is 'rigid').

For a good case management solution the following are key requirements;

• Dynamic Process Flow - A case worker must have the ability to determine 'next steps', create ad-hoc tasks in the process flow
• Collaborate - Often a knowledge worker has a need to collaborate/discuss with fellow case worker(s) to effectively handle a 'case'
• Share Artifacts - One of the important requirement. A case in most cases involve plenty of document sharing (including customer call records, agreements, contracts etc..) which must be shared/stored preferably in a digital asset management system
• Reporting - Solution must have the ability to generate reports to track status, monitor KPIs & take actions (Very important competitive edge to any business)

Now that we understood what case management is let us ponder upon some FAQs;

What are the key differences between BPM & Case Management?
Are they complementary technologies?
Where should one use case management against BPM & vice-versa?

I will try to answer these questions through this blog post.

Key differences b/w BPM & Case Management:

BPM complementing Case Management:

Absolutely. As discussed earlier, a case management solution may comprise of several BPM processes which can be triggered from within a case to complete a certain aspect of a milestone.

From a perspective, BPM can be considered a more 'mature' state of a 'case' where all process steps are well known & defined.

Should I choose BPM / Case Management?

Answer to this question is not straight forward. A business process/scenario must be assessed before determining the choice. But, here are some simple questions - If the answer is yes for any of the below then it could be a classic 'case-management'

Do you think your business process cannot be 'repeated' under one/more situations?
Does your business process rely on users who will determine the 'rules' rather than by a system defined rule?
Do you have trouble defining process flow for 'all' scenarios?

BPM 11g Subprocess (Default, Loop, Multi-Instance & Event based) Exemplified

With some common use-case references, I will be making an effort today to explain how, when & where various different sub-processes are used in BPM 11g. A subprocess is nothing but an embedded/nested subprocess within the parent process.

A subprocess - in a very simple use-case can be used to organize & modularize certain set of activities based on its function for better readability.

One important point to note here is that a subprocess must have an incoming & outgoing sequence flow akin to other BPM activities with the only exception of an event-based subprocess.

Oracle BPM 11g offers two variants of subprocess activities;

1. SubProcess (Default): This can be implemented in 3 different fashions based on its loop characteristics;

a) None: Primitive form of a subprocess to just organize & modularize activities within a certain business function as depicted in the diagram. For example, in an order process BPM process, there may be certain activities such as getting credit score of the customer from a credit bureau agency (external), checking inventory of the products in the order from the inventory management system (example JD Edwards) which constitutes a business function namely "Pre-Process Order" which can be grouped under a subprocess.

b) Loop: Think of this option as synonymous to a regular programming language's for/while/do-while construct. When this option is chosen, a loop condition needs to be specified which will let the subprocess know the number of times it would loop itself before the process control flow comes out of it. The loop condition can be specified either as a simple or XPath expression. Additionally, "Loop Maximum" value can be specified which will act as a "break" condition to come out of the loop.

If you had noticed, I referenced for/while & do-while constructs. Interesting to note here that a do-while would process the loop at least once even if the condition evaluates to false where as a while construct would loop only if the condition evaluates to true. This is exactly what the "Evaluate Before" option lets us do. By default this option is checked which means that the loop construct would act as a while and if unchecked would behave like a do-while.

Extending the order process use-case which has multiple orders in a process (bulk order processing), where the individual orders need to be processed sequentially (You might ideally would like to have them processed in parallel. But for whatever reasons - may be human resource crunch, the process analyst decides to have the orders processed serially :). Let us keep the use case going!).

c) MultiInstance: This is very similar to a loop subprocess except that this option would enable parallelism. This allows multiple instances for each item in a collection either based on the cardinality or collection data. Cardinality allows loop condition to be specified where as collection accepts the collection data. For instance, if we have a collection of orders that needs to be processed in parallel rather than sequentially, we would opt in for a MultiInstance subprocess which creates a task for the Finance user for every order simultaneously.

2. Event SubProcess: This is the next variant of subprocess which can exist independently in a main BPM process which means that it doesn't need an input & output sequence flow. Whenever, an event is triggered this subprocess can listen to those events and get invoked. Similar to event based gateway, catch & throw events, the event-based subprocess can be triggered with a message event, timer event, signal or on error. Also, the same can be configured to be "Interrupting" which will break the main process flow on event.

Let us now add some flavor to the order process use-case by adding fraud handling capability. We will now build a event-based subprocess which will handle fraud and will be triggered based on a message. The finance reviewer can trigger a fraud event which will be sent to the fraud analysis team for further diagnosis.

That completes the BPM 11g subprocesses usage. Watch out for more on individual subprocesses & their intricacies in my next posts.

Enabling Business-Driven Development Through Oracle BPM

Recently I was talking to the VP of Business Operations of a leading financial services company. The excerpt from the discussion below;

"How do I empower my business analysts/line of business users to take full control of our business processes?"

"After all, the people in our organization who best understands the business processes are our business analysts. But what we traditionally see is that the Information Technology trying to overwhelm and drive business which is a tragedy. I feel it is imperative for my business analysts to take control of our key business processes which are now driven by our IT whims & fancies."

"But the question that I would like to ask you is how to do it? and more importantly what solution can you offer?" 

The first thing that we need to understand here is that;

"There are really no IT projects in an enterprise. It is only the business processes that drives business which require IT to move it forward"

More often than not, this is forgotten. Honestly speaking the IT wing of a business knows very little about the business and business has very little control on the IT. Increasingly this is the same deficiency or insufficiency more and more businesses are facing. In trying to be agile on their business fronts they are unable to reflect at the same speed on their IT which has now become a critical part.

How to bridge this gap?

The answer lies in ensuring a seamless integration between the business and IT which we term as "Business-Driven Development".

Top three things to enable and sustain this approach are;

We need a technology that will

Equip your business analysts to design & model the business processes who is better placed to understand them

Enable them to share their business process models with the IT (Developers) to get them implemented. What we are trying to enable here is a top-down development approach driven purely by business

Empower stakeholders and LOB users to monitor the key performance indicators (KPIs) on the business processes in real-time so as to take immediate actions to resolve them

Oracle Business Process Management Suite (BPM) along with Oracle Business Activity Monitoring (BAM) - part of the Oracle Fusion Middleware stack can help you achieve all of the above and much more.

Lets delve into these for a moment and look at the components which will help us in achieving the goal.

Oracle Business Process Composer: This is purely a web-based modelling tool which will enable the business analysts of your organization to take control of the core business processes. The composer equips business analysts to work in groups, perform iterative model design/development, configure business rules, share the models with IT for further development, deploy them on server and much more. The important thing to note here is that a business process model can be developed from scratch without any IDE installation - all from within your web browser. I am sure the business guys are going to love this.

Oracle Business Process Workspace: Again a web-based workspace portal which allows all business users under various organization  roles to login and perform actions on their tasks.

Oracle Business Activity Monitoring: A web-based process monitoring dashboard which enables operational visibility into the business processes real-time. Again the BAM dashboards can be built by business users from within the browser based on the KPIs.

Is this not cool technology to take your business forward. Worrying less about IT and concentrating more on business development & growth has always been a dream. Now, take advantage of the latest & greatest technology from Oracle to move your business FORWARD!

Please feel free to write back to me if you need more information on this topic.

Oracle ADF BI Integration

This blog post will guide through the process of embedding OBIEE analytics (reports/dashboards) on an ADF application. Also hoping that this resource will act as a reference material for future.

There are multiple ways in which we can achieve BI integration with ADF. The illustrated version on this post is one that I found very sophisticated.

The reasons for OBIEE integration could be manifold. The default DVT features available within ADF can be used to build reports however not as sophisticated as BI does. In such cases, it would be a great time-saver plus a great way to show analytics to the user on a jspx page.

In a more interesting use case, I have used this feature within a BPM process user task - where the reviewer/approver can see the BI analytics on the UI along with process parameters before taking an action.

Products/Versions:

JDeveloper/ADF: 11.1.1.6
OBIEE: 11.1.1.5

Step 1: Download the following JDev extensions

1	bi-adf_bundle	Provides the ability to browse the BI Catalog through the JDeveloper resource catalog and add BI objects to an ADF page.
2	bi-adf-taskflow-extension_bundle	Provides the ability to browse the BI Catalog through the WebCenter resource catalog and add BI objects to a webCenter page.
3	bi-soap-cn_bundle	Provides the ability to create a BI Soap Connection.
4	bi-vo_bundle	Provides the ability to create a View Object that can query Oracle BI using logical SQL.
5	oracle.webcenter.customization_bundle	Provides design time capabilities for the WebCenter Customization Framework.
6	oracle.webcenter.framework_bundle	Provides design time capabilities for the WebCenter Framework and Services.

Links for download:

http://www.oracle.com/ocom/groups/public/@otn/documents/webcontent/131167.xml
http://www.oracle.com/ocom/groups/public/@otn/documents/webcontent/156082.xml

I know it is a quite a list - but can't get away from this :)

Step 2: Install these extensions to your JDeveloper

Help -> Check for Updates... -> Choose "Install From Local File" option, select the extensions one-by-one and let JDeveloper install them. JDeveloper will prompt for restarts for every extension install.

Step 3: After installing all the BI extensions, under the "Application Resources" panel of the ADF application (where you want to integrate the OBIEE reports), right click on the "Connections" -> "New Connection" -> "BI Presentation Services..."

Step 4: Provide the OBIEE analytics environment information in the wizard and proceed to complete connection creation. If you have not enable 'impersonation' in BI, change this option to 'false' in the following screen. Ensure that the connection is successfully established to the BI server.

Step 5: Now, this connection should appear automatically in the "IDE Connections" panel under the "Resource Pallete". This can be used to browse through the BI analytics for available dashboards/reports.

Now that the BI presentation services is available, all that remains is integrating the available BI reports into the ADF page

Step 6: First step towards ensuring that the ADF project is BI technology enabled. To do this, right click on the ADF project -> Project Properties

Under "Technology Scope" option ensure that the "Business Intelligence ADF View Components" is selected.

Step 7: We are almost there! Browse through the BI presentation services catalog from under the "Resource Pallete", drag & drop the required reports on to the ADF page.

Common Impediments & Resolutions:

I1: Unable to drag & drop the reports to ADF page

Resolution: Initially I was not able to drag and drop the BI reports on to the ADF page successfully. I had to manually include the following element to my ADF page source to force ADF to recognize the BI reports;

<adfbi:content id="content1" value="#{bindings.biExecBinding1}"/>

After doing this the BI technology binding was enabled on my ADF project. Then I removed the element which I added manually.

I2: At runtime, OBIEE reports were not displayed. The following error was reported on the ADF page;

Unable to connect to the BI Presentation Server. Please ensure that it is running, configured properly, and that the connection details within this application are correct.Please check the log file for more details.

The server logs reported the following error;

Cannot lookup the connection, BI using fallbacks[[
oracle.bi.presentation.soap.connection.BISoapException: No credentials found for this connection - please check that your connection credentials were deployed properly.
at oracle.bi.presentation.soap.connection.impl.BaseBISoapConnection.setReference(BaseBISoapConnection.java:216)
at oracle.bi.presentation.soap.connection.impl.RTBISoapConnection.(RTBISoapConnection.java:58)
at oracle.bi.presentation.soap.connection.BISoapConnectionFactory.getObjectInstance(BISoapConnectionFactory.java:715)
at oracle.adf.share.jndi.ReferenceStoreHelper.getObjectForReference(ReferenceStoreHelper.java:295)

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

at weblogic.servlet.internal.WebAppServletContext.execute(WebAppServletContext.java:2179)

at weblogic.servlet.internal.ServletRequestImpl.run(ServletRequestImpl.java:1490)

at weblogic.work.ExecuteThread.execute(ExecuteThread.java:256)

at weblogic.work.ExecuteThread.run(ExecuteThread.java:221)

Resolution: To resolve this error, ensure that the "Credentials" option is unchecked under the "Security Deployment Options" of the "Application Properties".

This config ensured that the credentials are not overwritten and are picked up from the cwallet.sso file under the EAR package. The issue was resolved and the BI reports were displayed on the ADF page as expected.

Write back if you have any thoughts/suggestions/clarifications :)

Extending WebCenter 11g with BPM Process Spaces

I recently extended my WebCenter Spaces with BPM process spaces. Since there has been lot of speculation & issues in successfully getting this done, this post attempts to act as a reference guide and detail the step-by-step process for extending the WebCenter Spaces with BPM process spaces.

Firstly ensure that all your managed servers are down (including AdminServer).

Step 1: Run the config.sh from the WebCenter home ($Middleware_Home/Oracle_WC/common/bin)

Step 2: Choose 'Extend an existing WebLogic domain' option

Step 3: Select the domain directory

Step 4: In the 'Select Extension Source' window, choose 'Extend my domain using an existing extension template' option

Step 5: Browse for 'oracle.bpm.spaces_template_11.1.1.jar' template. This can be found under '$Middleware_Home/Oracle_WC/common/templates/applications' folder

Step 6: On next, ensure that the domain is extended with WebCenter process spaces. This will now allow you to embed and use BPM 11g features from within the WebCenter spaces portal

Now that we have completed the first part by extending the domain with process space, we have to perform some configuration in Oracle UCM (Unified Content Management) server.

Step 7: Login to ECM as weblogic - Default URL would be http://<hostname>:16200/cs

Note: At the time of first login to Oracle ECM, make sure to configure the server socket port to 4444. This is very important for external applications (like WebCenter spaces) to communicate with content server via the RIDC - Intra Doc Communication protocol

Step 8: Here we should enable the following options (if not already enabled)

Administration -> AdminServer

Under Component Manager enable the following;

• WebCenterConfigure
• DynamicConverter
• Folders_g (You will have to click on 'advanced component manager' link at the top of the page to enable this).

It will be important to note that "FrameworkFolders" option description under the component manager page states that it is a replacement for the 'Folders_g' option. But process spaces will work only if 'Folders_g' is enable and will not work with 'FrameworkFolders'

Now that the options are enabled in ECM, the UCM_server 1 managed server has to be restarted for changes to take effect. After restart ensure that all managed servers are up and running.

Step 9: Login to EM console (http://<hostname>:7001/em) and ensure that the Intradoc Server Port is configured properly;

Now, try and access the WebCenter spaces portal (http://hostname:port/webcenter/spaces)
If there is an issue with access, check whether mds-soa datasource (JNDI: jdbc/mds/MDS_LocalTxDataSource) is targeted on WC_Spaces managed server. If not, please target the data source on the WC_Spaces server.

Configuring the process spaces in WebCenter:

Step 10: Configure the following properties in the process-portal-install.properties file which is available under $MIDDLEWARE_HOME/Oracle_SOA1/bpm/process_spaces
The description is available against every property within the properties file. I am stating it here with sample values just for convenience;

Property	Description	Sample Value
extendSoa	Flag to decide whether to extend existing BPM domain or create a new one. Set extendSoa to true, if the webcenter space and the SOA server are running in the same domain. Set extendSoa to false, if the webcenter space and the SOA server are running in different domains.	true
promptForPasswords	Flag to decide whether install will prompt for passwords or read them from this file.	false
Setting up Domain Global Trust
wcSetDomainRealmPassword	Flag to control whether to set domain realm password or not, set to true if extendSoa is false.	false
wcDomainRealmPassword	This is the password to setup trusted domains. Same password should be set on BPM domain as well.	welcome1
wc.server.port	WebCenter server port.	8888
BPM Schema and MDS Details
bpmDBUser	SOA DB Schema name	DEV_SOAINFRA
bpmDBPassword	SOA schema password	welcome1
bpmDBType	Type of DB	ORACLE
bpmDBDriver	DB Driver class	oracle.jdbc.OracleDriver
bpmDBUrl	SOA DB connect string	jdbc:oracle:thin:@localhost:1521:orcl
bpmMDSUser	BPM MDS username	DEV_MDS
bpmMDSPassword	BPM MDS password	welcome1
BPM Runtime Details
bpmServerURL	Specify the BPM server URL (t3://<bpmHost>:<bpmRuntimePort>) in the case of a single	t3://localhost:8001
bpmAdminUser	Admin username	weblogic
bpmAdminPassword	Admin password	welcome1
Webcenter Spaces Installation Details
wcOracleHome	Provide the oracle home location of the webcenter install.	/oracle/ofm/11g/wc_home
wcDomainName	Provide the Webcenter domain name. If extendSoa flag has been set to true, Webcenter domain name should be the same as SOA domain name. If extendSoa flag has been to false, Webcenter domain name will be different from SOA domain name.	fmw_domain
isWebcenterClusterConfig	Pass 'true' if in cluster mode, 'false' otherwise.	false
wcSpacesClusterName	Specify the name of the webcenter spaces cluster.
wcHost	WebCenter hostname	localhost
wcAdminPort	WebCenter port	7001
wcAdminUser	WebCenter Admin username	weblogic
wcAdminPwd	WebCenter Admin password	welcome1
wcManagedServerName	In the case of a single server environment, specify the name of the Webcenter Spaces Managed server. In a clustered environment, specify the name of any one of the Spaces managed servers that is part of the Cluster.	WC_Spaces
wcConfigServices	Flag to control whether to configure services	true
Content Server Details
wcContentServerName	Content Server hostname	localhost
wcContentServerPort	Content Server port	4444
wcContentSpacesRoot	Content Server spaces root	/WebCenter0809
wcContentAdminUser	Content Server Admin username	weblogic
Discussion Server Details
wcDiscussionServerUrl	Discussions Server URL	http://localhost:8890/owc_discussions
wcDiscussionAdminUser	Admin username	weblogic

Step 11: Now, execute the following Ant script from the following location $MIDDLEWARE_HOME/Oracle_SOA1/bpm/process_spaces. This will configure the BPM process spaces in WebCenter spaces.

$MIDDLEWARE_HOME/modules/org.apache.ant_1.7.1/bin/ant –f install.xml

Ensure that the script ran without any errors. In case of errors, please correct them before proceeding further. More often than not, the property values could cause issues if not set properly.

Sample Output should be something like below;

Buildfile: install.xml

readPasswords:

validate-env:
     [echo] Validating the environment..
     [echo] Successfully contacted discussion server running at http://localhost:8890/owc_discussions.
     [echo] Successfully contacted content server running at localhost:4444.

post-install:
     [echo] This target can also be called by setting 'piArgs' property for fine grained operations.
     [echo]         Possible values are:
     [echo]           -importRCOnly -- Imports only resource catalogs and exits.
     [echo]           -importGSOnly -- Imports only group spaces and exits.
     [echo]           -configDSOnly -- Configures data sources when SOA domain is not extended
     [echo]           -foreignJndiOnly -- Configures foreign JNDI links
     [echo]           -deploySTCOnly -- deploys server test case ejb
     [echo]           -all (default) -- Does all post install activies including all above
     [echo] Invoking post install script with args: -all
     .......................
     .......................
     .......................
     [exec] Initializing WebLogic Scripting Tool (WLST) ...
     [exec]
     [exec]
     [exec] Welcome to WebLogic Server Administration Scripting Shell
     [exec]
     [exec] Type help() for help on available commands
     [exec]
     [exec] Connecting to t3://localhost:7001 with userid weblogic ...
     [exec] Successfully connected to Admin Server 'AdminServer' that belongs to domain 'ofmdomain'.
     [exec]
     [exec] Warning: An insecure protocol was used to connect to the
     [exec] server. To ensure on-the-wire security, the SSL port or
     [exec] Admin port should be used instead.
     [exec]
     [exec] Location changed to edit tree. This is a writable tree with
     [exec] DomainMBean as the root. To make changes you will need to start
     [exec] an edit session via startEdit().
     [exec]
     [exec] For more help, use help(edit)
     [exec]
     [exec] Starting an edit session ...
     [exec] Started edit session, please be sure to save and activate your
     [exec] changes once you are done.
     [exec] Creating Foreign JNDI links to BPM Runtime...
     [exec] Updating deployment targets for the datasources...
     [exec] Activating all your changes, this may take a while ...
     [exec] The edit lock associated with this edit session is released
     [exec] once the activation is completed.
     [exec] Activation completed
     [exec] Importing Resource Catalogs...
     [exec] Importing resource catalog: $Middleware_Home\Oracle_WC1\bpm\process_spaces\resourceCatalog\ProcessSpacesCatalog.ear
     [exec] Location changed to domainRuntime tree. This is a read-only tree with DomainMBean as the root.
     [exec] For more help, use help(domainRuntime)
     [exec]
     [exec] Imported $Middleware_Home\Oracle_WC1\bpm\process_spaces\resourceCatalog\ProcessSpacesCatalog.ear
     [exec]
     [exec] Configuring webcenter services...
     [exec] Configuring webcenter to point to content server: localhost Port: 4444
     [exec]
     [exec] The Documents primary connection is "portal-content-server"
     [exec] Created connection "portal-content-server".
     [exec] To effect connection changes, you must restart the managed server on which the WebCenter application is deployed.
     [exec]
     [exec] Setting the spaces root on content server to :/WebCenter0809
     [exec]
     [exec]
     [exec]
     [exec] To effect connection changes, you must restart the managed server on which the WebCenter application is deployed.
     [exec]
     [exec] Configuring webcenter to point to the discussions server: http://localhost:8890/owc_discussions
     [exec]
     [exec] Created connection "portal-discussions".
     [exec] To effect connection changes, you must restart the managed server on which the WebCenter application is depl
oyed.
     [exec] Property "selected.connection" with value "portal-discussions" successfully added to service with id "oracle.webcenter.collab.forum"
     [exec] To effect connection changes, you must restart the managed server on which the WebCenter application is deployed.
     [exec] Property "selected.connection" with value "portal-discussions" successfully added to service with id "oracle.webcenter.collab.announcement"
     [exec] To effect connection changes, you must restart the managed server on which the WebCenter application is deployed.
     [exec]
     [exec] Services are configured. You need to restart webcenter to import BPM Process Portal group spaces. Call this script with '-importGSOnly' to import group spaces
     [exec] Grant PolicyStoreAccessPermission to oracle.bpm.pml.security.jar .....
     [exec]
     [exec] oracle.security.jps.service.policystore.PolicyStoreAccessPermission Granted to file:${wc.oracle.home}/soa/modules/oracle.bpm.runtime_11.1.1/oracle.bpm.pml.security.jar.

stop-webcenter:
    [mkdir] Created dir: C:\Users\satannam\AppData\Local\Temp\pp
    [touch] Creating C:\Users\satannam\AppData\Local\Temp\pp\shutdown.py
     [java]
     [java] Initializing WebLogic Scripting Tool (WLST) ...
     [java]
     [java] Welcome to WebLogic Server Administration Scripting Shell
     [java]
     [java] Type help() for help on available commands
     [java]
     [java] Connecting to t3://localhost:7001 with userid weblogic ...
     [java] Successfully connected to Admin Server 'AdminServer' that belongs to domain 'ofmdomain'.
     [java]
     [java] Warning: An insecure protocol was used to connect to the
     [java] server. To ensure on-the-wire security, the SSL port or
     [java] Admin port should be used instead.
     [java]
     [java] Shutting down the server WC_Spaces with force=true while connected to AdminServer ...
     [java] .

install-spaces:
     [echo] process portal installation completed. Please start the managed server now.

install:

BUILD SUCCESSFUL
Total time: 53 seconds


Step 12: Start the WebCenter managed server back as this script will shutdown the managed server. Check all other managed servers are running okay. If not restart them.

Step 13: Execution of above script will result in creation of couple of connections in the WC_Spaces portal. Now,  login to EM console -> Expand WebCenter -> Portal -> Spaces -> WebCenter Portal (11.1.1)(WC_Spaces). Choose WebCenter Portal -> Settings -> Service Configuration.

Under the WebCenter Portal Service Configuration, choose "Content Repository" from Service Name and edit the portal-content-server connection.

In the Edit Content Repository Connection screen, change the Administrator User Name from sysadmin to weblogic.

You will be required to restart the WC_Spaces server after the connection update. Restart the WC_Spaces managed server.

Step 14: Change the following property values in the process-portal-install.properties file

extendSoa=false

Step 15: Now, execute the Ant script again with the following flag/option. This will import the group spaces into the WebCenter spaces.

$MIDDLEWARE_HOME/modules/org.apache.ant_1.7.1/bin/ant –f install.xml -DpiArgs="-importGSOnly"

Step 16: Ensure that the script ran without errors. If any errors are encountered at this stage, rectify them and re-run the Ant script before proceeding further.

Output of the above script will be something like below;

Buildfile: install.xml

readPasswords:

post-install:
     [echo] This target can also be called by setting 'piArgs' property for fine grained operations.
     [echo]         Possible values are:
     [echo]           -importRCOnly -- Imports only resource catalogs and exits.
     [echo]           -importGSOnly -- Imports only group spaces and exits.
     [echo]           -configDSOnly -- Configures data sources when SOA domain is not extended
     [echo]           -foreignJndiOnly -- Configures foreign JNDI links
     [echo]           -deploySTCOnly -- deploys server test case ejb
     [echo]           -all (default) -- Does all post install activies including all above
     [echo] Invoking post install script with args: -importGSOnly
     .........................
     .........................
     .........................
     [exec] Initializing WebLogic Scripting Tool (WLST) ...
     [exec]
     [exec]
     [exec] Welcome to WebLogic Server Administration Scripting Shell
     [exec]
     [exec] Type help() for help on available commands
     [exec]
     [exec] Connecting to t3://localhost:7001 with userid weblogic ...
     [exec] Successfully connected to Admin Server 'AdminServer' that belongs to domain 'ofmdomain'.
     [exec]
     [exec] Warning: An insecure protocol was used to connect to the
     [exec] server. To ensure on-the-wire security, the SSL port or
     [exec] Admin port should be used instead.
     [exec]
     [exec] Importing group spaces into webcenter...
     [exec] Importing group space: $Middleware_Home\Oracle_WC1\bpm\process_spaces\groupspaces\default-modeling-workspace-gs.ear
     [exec] Location changed to domainRuntime tree. This is a read-only tree with DomainMBean as the root.
     [exec] For more help, use help(domainRuntime)
     [exec]
     [exec] Imported $Middleware_Home\Oracle_WC1\bpm\process_spaces\groupspaces\default-modeling-workspace-gs.ear
     [exec]
     [exec] Importing group space: $Middleware_Home\Oracle_WC1\bpm\process_spaces\groupspaces\default-modeling-workspace-gst.ear
     [exec]
     [exec] Imported $Middleware_Home\Oracle_WC1\bpm\process_spaces\groupspaces\default-modeling-workspace-gst.ear
     [exec]
     [exec] Importing group space: $Middleware_Home\Oracle_WC1\bpm\process_spaces\groupspaces\default-process-workspace-gs.ear

     [exec]
     [exec] Imported $Middleware_Home\Oracle_WC1\bpm\process_spaces\groupspaces\default-process-workspace-gs.ear
     [exec]
     [exec] Importing group space: $Middleware_Home\Oracle_WC1\bpm\process_spaces\groupspaces\default-process-workspace-gst.ear
     [exec]
     [exec] Imported $Middleware_Home\Oracle_WC1\bpm\process_spaces\groupspaces\default-process-workspace-gst.ear
     [exec]
     [exec] Importing group space: $Middleware_Home\Oracle_WC1\bpm\process_spaces\groupspaces\process-instance-gst.ear
     [exec]
     [exec] Imported $Middleware_Home\Oracle_WC1\bpm\process_spaces\groupspaces\process-instance-gst.ear
     [exec]
     [exec]
     [exec]
     [exec] Exiting WebLogic Scripting Tool.
     [exec]

BUILD SUCCESSFUL
Total time: 32 seconds


Step 17: This script will shutdown the WebCenter managed server and the Admin server. Restart the Admin server and WebCenter managed servers.

Step 18: Check whether the following users are already provisioned in ECM. If not create them manually.
Login to ECM http://<hostname>:16200/cs
Choose Administration -> Admin Applets

Click on User Admin and add the following users and grant all roles to these users
PersonalSpaces
ProcessPortal

Step 19: All set! Login to WebCenter spaces and verify that the BPM group spaces are available. That is a good sign that the WebCenter spaces portal has been extended successfully with BPM process spaces.