EmployeeManager Collaboration Template

Employees are a company's most valuable asset and also one of the most complicated assets to manage. There are a variety of legal, cultural, and contractual issues that must be handled professionally, or a company may risk losing valuable employees.

A business might use employee data in a variety of ways. For example, its Sales organization might use employee data to structure its compensation methodology and account and territory management. Its Customer Support organization might use employee data to implement task-assignment work flow or to put in place a strategy for problem escalation.

A database of accurate and consistent employee information is one method of ensuring excellent human resources management. EmployeeManager collaboration is another method. EmployeeManager ensures that a single clear view of employees is managed across the enterprise.

EmployeeManager synchronizes employee information that is created and maintained in the Human Resources (HR) system into Customer Interaction Management (CIM) or Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) applications. Employee information can be replicated in the ERP's HR module, its Accounts Payable (AP) module, or both.

EmployeeManager uses the generic Employee business object, which provides support for personnel data specific to different countries, such as Social Security numbers (SSN) for the USA and SIN for France.

Because employees are maintained (created and updated) in an HR system, which sends the changes out to other applications, an HR system always serves as the source of EmployeeManager's data. This collaboration does not synchronize Employee data into an HR system.

EmployeeManager does not handle the following processes:

Collaboration object setup

This section includes information on port bindings and required steps for setting up collaboration objects based on EmployeeManager. For information on standard features, ports, and configuration properties for collaboration templates, see the Collaboration Development Guide. For general information on creating collaboration objects, see the System Implementation Guide.

Port information

Figure 1 illustrates EmployeeManager's ports as they are displayed in System Manager. The tables that follow the figure provide information about each port.

Figure 1. EmployeeManager collaboration ports

Note: To prevent the collaboration object from using a port, bind that port to the Port connector. Binding the port indicates that the port is unused without causing the collaboration object to provide additional functionality.

Port name: DestinationAppRetrieve
Business object Bound to Function Verbs used
Employee The destination application's connector Sends a reference-valued business object to retrieve the full-valued business object. The result determines what verb to use when synchronizing the Employee.

Retrieve


Port name: From
Business object Bound to Function Verbs used
Employee Source application's connector or calling collaboration Receives the triggering business object. At the end of a synchronous call, this port also returns the triggering business object to the source application when the collaboration ends successfully.

Create Retrieve Update Delete


Port name: To
Business object Bound to Function Verbs used
Employee The destination application's connector

Sends the triggering business object out of the collaboration.

Create Update Delete

Setting up the collaboration object

EmployeeManager is designed to be used as a stand-alone collaboration. To set up EmployeeManager as a stand-alone collaboration object, follow these steps:

  1. Create the EmployeeManager collaboration object.
  2. Bind each of the collaboration object's ports as described in Port information.
  3. Set the Configuration properties for EmployeeManager.  

Collaboration template processes

This section illustrates the process logic for this collaboration template:

Overall process logic

Figure 2 illustrates EmployeeManager's process logic.

Figure 2. EmployeeManager collaboration main process

NOTE: Some applications do not physically delete records. The source application may update the contact's status to inactive, rather than delete it. In this case, the collaboration receives a Contact business object with the Update verb. Refer to the connector documentation for information on how a specific application processes deletes.

Inherited process logic

This collaboration template uses the following standard collaboration business processes:

For information about these processes, see the Collaboration Development Guide.

Compensation processing

InterChange Server Express can roll back a transaction when any step in a transactional collaboration fails. For example, when EmployeeManager is a member of a collaboration-object group that participates in a transactional collaboration, its actions are one subtransactional step of a larger transaction. If any step in the collaboration-object group's business process fails, the transactional collaboration details how InterChange Server Express rolls back the processing of every collaboration in the group.

When a EmployeeManager collaboration object is used independently of other collaboration objects or the collaboration object's From port is bound to a source application rather than to another collaboration, its process comprises a single transactional step. In such a situation, it is not necessary to perform rollback.

To cause a collaboration object or a collaboration-object group to perform rollback requires modifying the collaboration template. To understand transaction processing in the WebSphere Business Integration Server Express Plus system, see the System Implementation Guide. For information on adding transaction processing to the collaboration template, see the Collaboration Development Guide.

To extend the collaboration object to handle transaction processing, complete the following steps:

  1. Add this capability to the collaboration template and to every other collaboration template in the collaboration-object group.
  2. Set the minimum transaction level of the collaboration object and all members of the collaboration-object group to a value higher than None. If a failure occurs in any subtransaction step, settings of Minimal Effort or higher cause this collaboration object and other collaboration objects in the group to execute compensation for Create, Update, and Delete operations performed on all business objects.
  3. Set the USE_RETRIEVE property of the collaboration object and all other members of the collaboration-object group to "true." Forcing the collaboration objects to retrieve values before changing them allows the collaboration objects to restore the original values in an Update or Delete process.

Configuration properties

Note: EmployeeManager does not have unique configuration properties. All of its properties are standard.Standard properties

This collaboration template uses the following standard configuration properties for collaboration templates:

For information on these configuration properties, see the Collaboration Development Guide.

Collaboration messages

To view an explanation of the messages of this collaboration template, launch the Log Viewer and open the collaboration template's message file. To launch the Log Viewer and open the collaboration template's message file:

  1. In the Start menu, click Programs > IBM WebSphere Business Integration Express > Toolset Express > Administrative > Log Viewer.
  2. In the File menu, click Open.
  3. Use the Look In field to change the current folder to ProductDir\collaborations\messages, and then select the message file for this collaboration template.

Upgrade information

Upgrade process

To upgrade to a newer version of the collaboration template, perform the following steps:

  1. Stop the current EmployeeManager collaboration.
  2. Back up the repository. For information about backing up the repository, see the System Administration Guide.
  3. If you have customized the collaboration template:
  4. Install the new EmployeeManager collaboration template.
  5. Add your customizations to the new collaboration template.
  6. Create the new collaboration object, binding it to the appropriate connectors. For more information, see Collaboration setup.
  7. Run and test the new collaboration object.
  8. Make changes to the collaboration object based on any problems found during testing.

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