1.4. Business Central

Business Central is a web console that allows you to operate over individual components in a unified web-based environment: to create, manage, and edit your Processes, to run, manage, and monitor Process instances, generate reports, and manage the Tasks produced, as well as create new Tasks and notifications.
  • Process management capabilities allow you to start new process instances, acquire the list of running process instances, inspect the state of a specific process instances, etc.
  • User Task management capabilities allow you to work with User Tasks; claim User Tasks, complete Tasks through Task forms, etc.
Business Central integrates multiple tools:
  • Process Designer and other editors for modeling Processes and their resources (form item editor, work item editor, data model editor, etc.), as well as process model simulation tools (refer to Chapter 4, Process Designer)
  • Rules Modeler for designing Business Rules models and their resources (refer to Red Hat JBoss BRMS documentation)
  • Task client for managing and creating User Tasks (refer to Section 10.2, “User tasks”)
  • Process Manager for managing process instances (refer to Section 10.1, “Process instances”)
  • Dashboard Builder, the BAM component, for monitoring and reporting (refer to Chapter 13, Red Hat JBoss Dashboard Builder)
  • Business Asset Manager for accessing the Knowledge Repository resources, building and deploying business assets (refer to Chapter 3, Project)
    Artifact repository (Knowledge Store) is the set of data over which Business Central operates. It provides a centralized store for your business knowledge, which can consist of multiple repositories with business assets and resources (for further information, refer to the Red Hat JBoss BPM Suite Administration and Configuration Guide).
Business Central can be accessed from your web browser on https://HOSTNAME/business-central (for instances running on localhost https://localhost:8080/business-central).
The tools are accessible from the Views and BPM menus on the main menu:
  • Process Definitions displays the Process Definition List with the Process definitions available in the connected repository.
  • Process Instances displays the Process Instance List with the Process instances currently running on the Process Engine.
  • Tasks displays a view of the Tasks list for the currently logged-in user. You can call a Task List in the grid view or in the calendar view from the BPM menu.

1.4.1. Business Central Environment

Home page

1

The main menu contains the links to the Home page and all available perspectives.

2

The perspective menu contains menus for the selected perspective (here it is empty; note that the content differs for individual perspectives) Section 1.4.2, “Perspectives”.

3

The perspective area contains the perspective tools (here the home page with links to individual perspectives and their views), such as views and editors.

Figure 1.3. Home page

1.4.2. Perspectives

Business Central provides the following groups of perspectives accessible from the main menu:
  • Authoring group:
    • Project Authoring perspective contains the Project Explorer view (by default on the left) with the overview of available repository structure, and information on available resources, such as, business process definitions, form definitions, etc.; the editor area on the right, where the respective editor appears when a resource is opened; and the Messages view with validation messages.
    • Artifact Repository perspective contains a list of jars which can be added as dependencies. The available operations in this perspective are upload/download artifact and open (view) the pom.xml file.
    • Administration perspective (available only for users with the ADMIN role) contains the File Explorer view (by default on the left) with available asset repositories; the editor area on the right, where the respective editor appears when a resource is opened. The perspective allows an administrator to connect Knowledge Store to a repository with assets and to create a new repository (refer to Administration and Configuration Guide).
  • Deploy group:
    • Deployments perspective contains a list of the deployed resources and allows you to build and deploy an undeploy new units.
  • Process Management group:
    • Process Definitions perspective contains a list of the deployed Process definitions. It allows you to instantiate and manage the deployed Processes.
    • Process Instances perspective contains a list of the instantiated Processes. It allows you to view their execution worklow and its history.
  • Tasks group:
    • Task List perspective contains a list of Tasks produced by Human Task of the Process instances or produced manually. Only Tasks assigned to the logged-in user are visible. It allows you to claim Tasks assigned to a group you are a member of.
  • Dashboards group (the BAM component):
    • Process & Task Dashboard perspective contains a prepared dashboard with statistics on runtime data of the Execution Server
    • Business Dashboards perspective contains the full BAM component, the Dashbuilder, including administration features available for users with the ADMIN role.

1.4.3. Embedding Business Central

Business Central provides a set of editors to author assets in different formats. A specialized editor is used according to the asset format.
Business Central provides the ability to embed it in your own (Web) Applications using standalone mode. This allows you to edit rules, processes, decision tables, et cetera, in your own applications without switching to Business Central.
In order to embed Business Central in your application, you will need the Business Central application deployed and running in a web/application server and, from within your own web applications, an iframe with proper HTTP query parameters as described in the following table.

Table 1.1. HTTP Query Parameters for Standalone Mode

Parameter Name Explanation Allow Multiple Values Example
standalone This parameter switches Business Central to standalone mode. no (none)
path Path to the asset to be edited. Note that asset should already exists. no git://master@uf-playground/todo.md
perspective Reference to an existing perspective name. no org.guvnor.m2repo.client.perspectives.GuvnorM2RepoPerspective
header Defines the name of the header that should be displayed (useful for context menu headers). yes ComplementNavArea
The following example demonstrates how to set up an embedded Author Perspective for Business Central. 
===test.html===
 <html>
  <head>
    <title>Test</title>
  </head>
  <body>
    <iframe id="ifrm" width="1920" height="1080" src='http://localhost:8080/business-central?standalone=&perspective=AuthoringPerspective&header=AppNavBar'></iframe>
  </body>
</html>
X-frame options can be set in web.xml of business-central. The default value for x-frame-options is as follows: 
<param-name>x-frame-options</param-name>
  <param-value>SAMEORIGIN</param-value>