You have the basic process, and you have a place to put the data.
Now you must provide an interface where the participants of the process can
input or review this data when it reaches their activity. In ALBPM, the two
main ways of doing this are to create a
presentation, or to use JSP pages.
Both methods are used to create a web page or form which the
participant will use to interact with the data. Presentations can be built
quickly by Studio, while JSP pages can have a look and feel precisely defined
by developers. Even if the process you are developing will use JSP when
deployed, presentations are useful during process development.
You will start with the presentation for the user who submits the
expense report. To define the SubmitReport presentation:
- In the Project Navigator, right-click on the ExpenseReport BPM
Object (
), and click
(
).
The
Presentation Wizard appears.
- Enter
SubmitReport in the
Presentation field.
- The SubmitReport presentation will be based on the
ExpenseReport BPM object. To select this, check the
From Template checkbox. Do not check the
BPM Preferences checkbox.
- Click
Next.
The
Presentation Referenced Attributes page of the
Presentation Wizard appears.
- In this dialog box you select the attributes which will be
shown as fields in the presentation. Select the attributes shown in the table
below, in the order shown.
| submittedBy
|
| submitDate
|
| description
|
| costCenter
|
| items[].description
|
| items[].date
|
| items[].amount
|
| total
|
| comments
|
The fields will be placed in the presentation as they are ordered
in the attribute list. You control this order either by adding each attribute
in the desired sequence, or by selecting an attribute in the list and using the
Up and
Down buttons to place it in the proper
position.
- Click
Finish.
The
SubmitReport presentation is created, and a
presentation editor is opened with it.
- Make sure the
Properties window is open in Studio. It should
be on the right side. If not, open it by clicking
from the
menu.
- In the presentation, select the text field in the
Amount column.
The properties for the text field appear in the
Properties window. The
Name property of the text field should be
items_text2.
- Set the
On Change Invoke property to
Refresh().
This will insure that the Total value is recalculated every
time an amount is entered or changed.
- Since the user should not enter a value for the Total, select
the text field for the total value and set the
Editable property to
No simply by clicking on the property.
- Save your changes.
- You can preview what the presentation will look like. To do
so, click on the HTML Preview (
) icon in the presentation editor.
An HTML preview of the presentation is displayed in your browser,
and should look like this:
- Close the presentation editor.
Note that Studio created the Description and Comments fields as
multi-line text boxes automatically, due to the string length. The SubmitDate
and Date fields are accompanied by a calendar tool, while the CostCenter field
is a drop-down list. Finally, the Total, which you set to not-editable (in
effect, read-only), is shown as a label rather than a text field.