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.
Notes:
- 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 BP-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.
CAUTION:
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.