What You Can Customize and How - Java Step Processors

The following table provides a summary description of the kinds of things you can customize for a Java Step Processor and how to do so. The types of things you may wish to modify in a Java application are similar regardless of your web application (FileNet Workplace, FileNet Web Services, or FileNet Open Client).

The table describes levels of customization from the least complex (making some modifications to the basic "look and feel" of the user interface) to the more complex (such as modifying the user interface page layout, adding new User Controls, etc.) to still more complex (involving Content integration) to the most complex (customizing a Step Processor application from scratch). These levels of customization — and how to proceed with that level of customization for each web application — are described in the table.

Note No description can be all-inclusive for all possible scenarios. This table provides general guidelines that summarize some, but not all, of the many ways that you can customize a Step Processor.

Customize

Changes

Description

User Interface

Modify the basic "look and feel" of the user interface.

Modify the basic appearance of the Step Processor. Modify colors, logos, graphics, fonts, and banners to fit your company's look and feel and the purpose of the Step Processor.

Using your IDE (such as IDEA, JBuilder, etc.) or text editor, you can copy and modify the sample Java Step Processor provided with the Process Development Environment (for details see Using the Sample Java Step Processors), or you can develop your own Java Step Processor user interface.

Modify the page layout or structure of the Step Processor, for example to match the type of company forms, documents, or activities this step is intended to accomplish.

Using your IDE or editor, you can copy and modify the page layout of the sample Java Step Processor provided with the Process Development Environment (for details see Using the Sample Java Step Processors), or you can develop your own Java Step Processor layout and interface.
Add new User Controls, modify existing Controls, or hide or delete existing Controls. Using your IDE or text editor, you can copy and modify the sample Java Step Processor application/applet provided with the Process Development Environment, or develop your own. To add new User controls, modify, or hide existing controls, you may use standard Java Swing controls (e.g., JButton, etc.), or you can use the sample controls provided with the Java Step Processor UI Toolkit, or your own Swing-based or AWT-based controls, or you can mix and match as you wish. If you wish to use the sample controls provided with the Java Step Processor UI Toolkit, be sure to add the vwpanel.jar file (provided with your Process Development Environment) to your IDE panel container (for details see Building a Java Step Processor with the Java Step Processor UI Toolkit).
Content Integration Modify integration with the Content Engine to access Content Engine objects from an Object Store or a File Store or for Image Manager applications, from FileNet Content and/or Image Services libraries.

You use the Process APIs to integrate with the Process Engine. If you modify a workflow definition to create a new queue that will include work objects retrieved from the Process Engine, use the VWSystemConfiguration class (for information on configuration-related API calling sequences, see Administration and Configuration API Relationships). For information on API calling sequences used to query a queue and retrieve Step elements, etc., see Runtime API Relationships.

Build From Scratch Create Step Processor from scratch using a framework that incorporates a custom user interface and integrates Content data and Process Engine services.

Either copy, deploy, and modify the sample Java Step Processor application/applet provided with the Process Development Environment (for details see Building a Java Step Processor with the Java Step Processor UI Toolkit), or develop your own. If you are developing your own, the Step Processor Development Procedure provides an overall step-by-step approach of the entire custom Step Processor development procedure. Note that your new Step Processor will need to use the Process Java APIs to login to the Process Engine and establish a Process session to perform Step Processor runtime operations (for information, see Working with Process Java API Classes). For information on API runtime calling sequences used to query a queue and retrieve Step elements, etc., see Runtime API Relationships.

As indicated above, to add new User controls, modify, or hide existing controls for Java Step Processors, etc., you can use standard Java Swing controls (e.g., JButton, etc.), or you can use the sample controls provided with the Java Step Processor UI Toolkit, or your own Swing-based or AWT-based controls, or you can mix and match as you wish (for details see Building a Java Step Processor with the Java Step Processor UI Toolkit). You may wish to create Work Performers for specific operations on a workflow step (for example, you may wish to develop a Component Integrator-based Work Performer (automatically polls the queues) to obtain a JMS or Java object (including retrieving objects from a Content Engine Object Store or from an external system or application), or a daemon-based automatic Work Performer (you will need to specify polling). For information on creating Work Performers for Step Processor operations, see Developing Work Performers.

When developing a Java Step Processor, you will need to consider whether to deploy it as an application or an applet. For guidance on which might be most appropriate for your environment, see Developing Custom Java Step Processors - Applications vs. Applets. Note that all Step Processors must, at a minimum, perform certain basic operations. For information on these operations, see Basic Step Processor Operations. If your environment requires integration with an outside or legacy system or application, such as SAP, Siebel, PeopleSoft, etc., you may wish to use the Process Engine EAI Connector to interface and to retrieve objects for Step Processor operations. For information on using the Process Engine EAI Connector, see Overview of FileNet Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) for the Process Engine.