Business parameters are used to store long-lived information defined at the
organization level.
Information suitable for storage as a business parameter includes company address and
phone data, tax rates used in calculations within the process, or infrequently changed
economic values such as the prime lending rate. Business parameters are visible from
any process within a project and should generally be thought of as constants, though
they can be changed.
Tip: Business parameters should be used for infrequently changed values which you do not want
to include in the actual code. For example, company address data, the prime lending
rate, or a sales tax rate are all good uses for business parameters.
It is strongly recommended not to use Business Parameters for values which will
change very frequently (once a day or more). For those cases consider other options.
If you do need to change a Business Parameter from PBL code, you can change it at runtime
using the component Business Parameter in the Lib category. See the Studio. component
documentation.
- If you change a Business parameter from a method you must be aware that the new value is
not immediately available for all instances. Even more, if this value is changed
from a PBL-Method, the result may not always be the expected one and not available at
the same time across the all participants.
- If the business parameter is used in a due transition expression of an activity, the
business parameter value that applies is the one defined at the time the instance
enters the activity. For example, let's say the business parameter "MAXTIME" is used
in the due transition expression of the activity "Reply to Customer". When the
instance "Request Customer 1" arrives, the due time is calculated using the value
that the MAXTIME has at that moment. If another instance (in any process) changes
the value of MAXTIME or you manually change it in the Process Administrator, the new
value does not apply for the due time of the instance "Request Customer 1" for the
activity "Reply to customer". It will apply for all instances that arrive to that
activity after the business parameter was changed.
Note: If you change the Business Parameter at runtime, and you then stop and restart the Studio
Process Engine, all business parameters are restored from the project definition.
However, the Enterprise Process Engine does maintain Business Parameter
values through a start/stop cycle, because in a production environment Business
Parameter changes are assumed to be permanent.