Overview

About Business Process Services

ENOVIA Business Process Services provides the configurable user interface and schema and features used throughout the ENOVIA products, such as Collections, Discussions, document management, and company profiles. In addition, ENOVIA Business Process Services includes:

• Team Central--allows internal and external (such as suppliers) users to collaborate while maintaining access controls to data
• ENOVIA Business Metrics Module--provides reporting capability to assess performance based on product data

ENOVIA Business Process Services contains schema for all the ENOVIA products creating a framework or foundation for the business process products. It also installs the programs and Java Server Pages needed to construct the user interface shared by all the applications. ENOVIA Business Process Services must be installed before you can install any ENOVIA product. It can also be used as the basis for creating your own applications.

Administrative Object Names

When you look at the administrative objects installed with the ENOVIA Business Process Services, you may find that some object names are prefixed with "eService" and the version number of the installation. The installation program adds this prefix to prevent name collisions between objects in ENOVIA Business Process Services and objects in the existing database.

For example, if you install the version V6R2009 ENOVIA Business Process Services onto a database that contains a Part type, the installation program renames the Part type within the ENOVIA Business Process Services to "eServiceV6R2009~Part". Other administrative objects within the ENOVIA Business Process Services that refer to the type--such as attributes for the type, relationships that connect the type, and policies that govern the type--refer to the ENOVIA Business Process Services Part type, now named "eServiceV6R2009~Part." The installation makes no change to the existing Part type.

To see a list of the name collisions the system found during installation, open the file called "installFrameworkxxxx.log", where xxxx is the software version number. This file is in the installation directory. The file also lists all the administrative objects installed or modified during installation. For instructions on configuring objects in ENOVIA Business Process Services, using existing objects instead of the objects installed with ENOVIA Business Process Services, and for information about the installation process, see About Configuring.

Schema Components

ENOVIA Business Process Services contains the items listed in the following table.

Conventions

Early versions of some of the ENOVIA products were called suites and most consisted of several distinct applications. Many of these distinct applications were merged together and became Centrals, such as Engineering Central and Program Central. These Centrals have been renamed to better indicate their business processes; however, the term "suite" is still used for some property and parameter names.

Prerequisites

For information about system requirements for ENOVIA Business Process Services, refer to ENOVIA program directory.

Before you begin administrative work with ENOVIA Business Process Services, you need to understand:

• The concepts, terminology, and processes related to Business Modeler. To help gain this understanding, see the Business Modeler Guide.
• The concepts, terminology, processes, and procedures for the ENOVIA product you will be configuring and maintaining. Refer to the online guide that accompanies the application. The default location for these guides is ENOVIA_INSTALL/studio/Apps/Framework/VERSION/Doc and APP_SERVER_DIR/ENOVIA_INSTALL/studio/Apps/Doc, where the APP_SERVER_DIR is either the document root for non-J2EE implementations or the staging directory under the RMI directory for J2EE installations.

Always refer to the current readme for any changes since the publication of the online guides.

Use of General Clients

Some of the instructions in this and other administration guides require the use of a general Matrix client navigator. It is important to restrict the use of these general navigator applications to only a few specially-trained business administrators

These are the general client navigators:

• desktop version of Matrix Navigator (also known as the thick client)
• web version of Matrix Navigator (also known as the thin client, PowerWeb, eMatrixApplet, and the Web Navigator)

It is important to restrict the use of these general navigator applications to only a few specially-trained business administrators and to only the purposes described in the Application Exchange Framework User's Guide and applications' administrator's guides. ENOVIA applications run JavaBean code that requires data to have specific characteristics and conditions. For example, objects may have to have certain relationships defined, have specific values entered for attributes, be in specific lifecycle states, or be in particular vaults. When a person works within the ENOVIA application user interface, these data conditions are met. However, the general navigators are not necessarily aware of these conditions and therefore a person working within the general navigators can easily compromise data integrity.

Another reason to restrict access to the general clients is that certain actions have different results depending on where the action is taken. A command on a JSP page may include options (such as additional MQL clauses) to ensure that the operation is completed as the application expects, but a user in a general client has no guidance on what options should be chosen. For example, when a file is checked into ENOVIA Live Collaboration using a general client, the store set in the policy is used; when using an ENOVIA product to check in a file, the person or company default store is used regardless of the store set by the policy.

The general navigators must or can be used in the following situations:

• ENOVIA application features require data that cannot be created within the ENOVIA application user interface.

For example, some user profile information and template information must be created in a general navigator.

• Automated business rules and processes need to be configured, such as triggers and autonamers.
• Data needs to be investigated for troubleshooting, testing, or data conversion.

The general navigators should only be used in these situations, using the instructions provided in ENOVIA documentation, and only by specially-trained business administrators. Standard users of ENOVIA products should never be allowed to work with their data in a general navigator and external customers should never be given access to a general navigator. Also, using Studio Customization Toolkit applications or any programming interface that does not go through the applications bean layer has the potential to cause undesirable results within the ENOVIA product data.

Related Documentation

This section lists the documentation available for ENOVIA Business Process Services and ENOVIA products.

• Business Process Services Documentation
• ENOVIA Product Documentation

ENOVIA Business Process Services Documentation

The framework installs with this documentation:

• Schema Reference Guide (this guide)

  This guide is available in pdf format. The guide provides a reference for all of the schema that underlies the applications.

• Business Process Services Administrator's Guide (Overview)

  This guide is available in pdf format. It is for people in the host company who need to configure and customize the ENOVIA products. It also describes configuration options for some of the features installed with ENOVIA Business Process Services, such as checkin/checkout, routes, and the default vault preference. These configuration options include triggers, configurable properties, and URL parameters.

• Configuring ENOVIA V6 Applications Guide

  This guide is available in pdf format. It is for people who will use the ENOVIA Business Process Services to build their own applications or enhance the ENOVIA products

• Application Exchange Framework User's Guide, Common Components User's Guideand online help

  These guides are available in pdf format and in html format as a context-sensitive online help system. They describe how to use features installed with ENOVIA Business Process Services, such as pages accessed from the global toolbar. It also explains how to navigate through the user interface, such as how to use table pages and the Context Navigator.

• JavaDoc

  For descriptions of methods in packages and classes, see ENOVIAHOME/studio/Apps/BusinessProcessServices/Doc/javadoc/framework/html/index-all.html or STAGING/ENOVIAHOME/studio/doc/javadoc.

ENOVIA Product Documentation

All ENOVIA products install with this documentation:

• User Guide and online help for each application

  Users access online help for an application by clicking the Help tool on the toolbar of every page.

  These guides are for the people who will log in and use any part of the application, including Administrators who use the profile management portions of an application to manage person and company profiles.

• Administrator Guide for each application

  Each application has a separate guide for host company administrators who work with ENOVIA products. These are the same people who will use ENOVIA Business Process Services and the ENOVIA Studio Modeling Platform (MQL, Business Modeler, ENOVIA Matrix Navigator) to configure an application. The Administrator's Guide for each application contains information that is unique for the application.