The processes within a project always operate in the context of an organization. This means that an organization must be defined for each project.
- Organizational Units
- Roles
- Groups
- Participants
- Holidays
- Calendars
- Business Parameters
An organization is defined for each project. Therefore, it is not necessary to include elements of the organization which will have no function in the processes of a particular project. If you are not sure you will require a given element, leave it out. It can be always be added later, even on a running Process Engine.
Organization elements are accessed from Studio's Project Navigator or from the left pane in Process Administrator. A description of each type of element follows:
| Element | Description | |
|---|---|---|
| Organizational Units | 
|
Organizational Units are used to represent departments or divisions within the organization. Organizational Units can be defined hierarchically so that, for example, you can represent divisions within an organization, departments within a division, areas within a department, and so on. You can assign Participants, Calendars, and Business Parameters to an Organizational Unit. You can also deploy processes under an organizational unit. |
| Roles | 
|
Roles are used to represent functions performed by people related to the organization. Roles are assigned to participants or groups, and these assignments define the permissions the participants have when executing AquaLogic BPM tasks through WorkSpace. |
| Groups | 
|
Groups are collections of roles. In this way, it is possible assign multiple roles to participants in a single step. Groups may also contain other groups. |
| Participants | 
|
Participants are the actual people who participate in the organization, usually as end users of the BPM implementation. |
| Holidays | 
|
Holidays Define the organization’s non-working days. These rules inform the Process Execution Engine that there is an exception to the normal calendar rules on certain days of the year. |
| Calendars | 
|
Calendars define the organization’s work week and work schedule. Calendar rules can be assigned to organizational units. |
| Business Parameters | 
|
Business Parameters are used to maintain constant values defined either for the entire organization, or at the Organizational Unit level. These parameters are visible to all instances and all processes across the Organization. Although business parameters may be changed every once in a while, they are not meant to be used as variables. Rather, they provide a way of storing long-lived values, such as a sales tax rate, without having to hard-code them into PBL methods. |
Working With Organization Elements
When the embedded Process Engine is started from Studio (select from the menu), all the information about the organization is copied to an isolated environment where the engine executes processes.
Changes introduced while the Engine is running will not be updated to the runtime environment until the Process Engine is stopped and started, or until a Refresh Engine Data operation is performed. Depending on how runtime engine properties are set, the Refresh Engine Data operation might be performed automatically after introducing changes to the organization structure.
See Engine Properties for further information on how the runtime environment is updated with the latest changes. Some changes might require users currently logged in to WorkSpace first log out before having the changes available in their WorkSpace sessions. Refer to Refreshing the Embedded Execution Engine Data for further details on this topic.