BPM and attachments

[Former Member]

I have a question with regards to BPM and document attachments. We have many scenarios in which documents would be attached to the process instance for review etc. Are there any best practice guidelines for storage of such documents in a BPM process.  What is typically the best place to store the document after the process instance is closed? Should these be sent to the back-end application or stay in BPM even after the process instance is closed. What options are available? Any guidance would be much appreciated.

Thanks,

Gaurav

[junwu · Accepted solution]

you can put the attachment in ECM(default feature in CE) and pass the id to bpm.

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Does that apply to storage even after a particular process instance has ended? In some scenarios the documents would get passed to the back-end system. However, there are scenarios where the documents are not needed in the back-end (if need be we can pass them to the back-end but they would add no value). In these scenarios the documents might be needed later on for auditability etc. Would you use ECM to store these documents and keep on accessing them from the BPM side? Is it advisable to do so? What are some of the key considerations?

Thanks,

Gaurav

[junwu · Accepted solution]

it has nothing to do with bpm, it is just general content management. sap also use this to store the attachment.

[stefan_henke · Accepted solution]

Hi,

as Jun pointed out, the recommended way is to use ECM as document storage. The process context should only contain the reference to the document. This is basically due to performance reasons.

It is actually up to your requirement what to do with the document once the process has been completed. You can pass back the id to the backend so that it can look it up from ECM. Or you can delete it again from ECM. However, once the process has been finished, you would not look it up anymore via BPM, but directly from ECM. It is a completely separated component which also provides it´s own archiving capabilities.

Hope this helps.

Best regards,
Stefan

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Stefan,

I also have a similar requirement where we have to upload a document through the upload UI element in WD Java and pass the document in the BPM process flow. Also, we need to retrieve the document after the process completion.

As I am new to the BPM technology, can you tell me the step by step procedure to do this using ECM(if possible along with codes). Please help.

Best regards,

Pramod.

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Pramod,

Start here, it explains all the basics.

http://scn.sap.com/docs/DOC-3077

regards, Nick