Defining an Application and Policies

Websphere Business Services Fabric v7.0
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1. Defining an Application and Policies
1. Pre-requisites
2. Creating an application
3. Create Policy overrides
1. Create an application-scoped Policy
2. Policy Override Semantics
4. Working with Changesets
1. Submitting a change set
2. Publishing a change set
2. Related links

Defining an Application and Policies

Applications represent the solution. In the authoring space, defining an application involves creating a simple process flow that represents the tasks, in the process in terms of existing business services. An application typically also contains policies. A policy defines the application.

Pre-requisites

1. Start WID
2. Start the server (Websphere Dynamic Process Edition Server v7.0) ().
   Right-click the server and select Start.
3. Launch Business Space ().
   After the server starts successfully, right-click the server and select Launch\Business Space.
4. Log-in window().
   After you launch the business space, a log-in window appears.  Enter your userID and password and click Login.
5. Space Manager window ().
   In the Space Manager window, click the Loans Origination Authoring Space.

Creating an application

Create the following application using the following guide:

Application Name	Description
Loan Origination

1. In the Getting Started page (), click Start working with applications
2. In the Application Browser window, click on the “Actions” button and select “New Application” ()
   
3. In the Create New Application window, enter name and click OK()
4. In the Application Browser window, click on Loan Origination link in the Application Browser to open the Application details page ()
   
5. In the Application Details window, select Application Flow and then click Edit to make changes ().

Add the following channels and business services

1. Add channels
1. Click the New button to create a channel ()
2. Select Better Financials Online and click “OK” ()
3. Do Steps 1 and 2 again but this time select Customer Care Call Center.  After adding the two channels, the application flow should look like this ().
2. Add business services
1. Add a Business Service to the application flow by clicking the small square button on the wire ().
2. Select a business service and click “OK” ().
3. Add the following business services in the order specified:
1. Check Credit
   
2. Review Collateral
3. Final Review
4. Notify Customer. 
   
4. The application flow should now look like this ().
3. Add roles
1. Add roles to the services by hovering over the service square and clicking the “Add Role” button () and assigning the required role ().
2. You can also optionally associate a service performer or role with a given task. A policy may include a when condition that specifies a role, so that policy is only considered when a task with that role is invoked.
   

   Business Service	Role
   Review Collateral	Underwriter
   Final Review	Underwriter
   Notify Customer	CSR

4. Click “Save” to save the new application flow ().

Create Policy overrides

Create the following policy overrides using the guide below:

Policy Name	Business Service	Policy Details	Reason for Override
Credit Check Third-party override  ()	Check Credit	FOR: Check Credit in this application (Loan Origination) WHEN:New Customer is equal to True THEN:Set Credit Check Type to Third-Party	New customers can't use the internal credit check because they are not applicable to new customer as this client type has no financial history with the bank. In the last chapter, a policy established that the credit check type should default to INTERNAL
Review Collateral Auto override	Review Collateral	FOR: Review Collateral in this application (Loan Origination) WHEN:Line of Business is equal to Auto Loan THEN:Select No Collateral Review in Review Collateral	The default policy establishes a client collateral review. However, the business decides that client collateral reviews are unnecessary for the auto line of business.
Final Review Override	Final Review	FOR: Final Review in this application (Loan Origination) WHEN:Amount of Loan is less or equal to 30000 OR Loan Status in (More Info Needed, Rejected) THEN:Select Automated Underwriting in Final Review	The business decides that an expensive manual underwriting can be replaced with the automated variation if the amount of the requested loan is less than $25,000. If the loan has already been rejected or flagged as needing more information, route it to the automatic variation.
Notify Customer Human override	Notify Customer	FOR: Notify Customer in this application (Loan Origination) WHEN:Loan Status is equal to More Info needed THEN:Select Human Notification in Notify Customer	Typically, the customer can automatically be notified of the status of their loan application. However, in some situations, it is determined that more information is needed to approve the loan. In that case, a customer service representative needs to get in contact with the applicant to acquire the needed information.

You may find it a requirement to create a policy to run a credit check.

New customers can't use the internal credit check because they are not applicable to new customer as this client type has no financial history with the bank.

In the last chapter, a policy established that the credit check type should default to INTERNAL. Refine that logic with a new policy as follows:

1. Add "Application Policies" by clicking the “add” link to the right of the “Application Policies” header ().
   
2. Enter "Credit Check Third-party override" (Name), select Check Credit (Business Service) and click “OK” ()
   
3. Edit the policy so that it looks as shown in the following figure and then click “Save” ()
   
1. For = Check Credit in this application (Loan Origination)
2. When = New Customer is equal to True
3. Then = Set Credit Check Type to Third Party

Create an application-scoped Policy

An application-scoped policy must be created next. Application-scoped policies come in two variants that are distinguished by their scoping statements.

If a policy has the statement FOR <Application> then it will apply for every step in the application flow based on the whether or not the WHEN condition is satisfied. Since this kind of policy is not specific to any business service, the results that can be added to the THEN clause are limited to setting business parameters as we did for some of our credit check policies in the last chapter.

If a policy has the statement, "FOR <Application> in <Business Service> then it will apply only in situations where the given business service is being invoked within the given application. Since this policy is specific to a business service, such policies can be used to specify a process variation to select when invoking that business service. 

Policy Override Semantics

Often, it is necessary to use a policy to establish some default behavior and to have other policies that override this behavior for special circumstances. For example, we will want to override the business service policy that determines that the Final Review business service should use human underwriting.
At runtime, the system considers all policies that match given their FOR and WHEN conditions and merges the results into a single composite policy. In the end, there can be only one selected process variation and only one value assigned to any given concept. The system uses the following rules to determine which settings to use:

• Settings from Application-scoped policies take precedence over settings from Business Service-scoped policies.
• If two settings are both defined at the Application or Business-Service level, the priority field is used to disambiguate. The setting that comes from a policy with the largest integer priority value will take precedence.
• If neither of these schemes can be used to disambiguate the value for a given setting, a policy conflict error will happen at runtime.

Working with Changesets

Once your application is complete you need to submit your changes to a change set. Once your changes have been submitted, the administrator or the user who created the change set must submit the changes.

Submitting a change set

1. Go to the Governance page by clicking the dropdown arrow to the left of the “Add Widgets” button and selecting “Governance” ()
   
2. Select the change set and then click the “Submit Change Set” button ()
   
3. Fill in the comment and click “OK” ()
   As soon as you submit the changes, the change set moves from Draft to Pending state. Any object listed in a change set that is in Pending state is locked such that no user can change those objects until the changes are either published or rejected. 

Publishing a change set

An administrator now needs to review and publish these changes.

1. An administrator logs in to Business Space, opens the “Loans Origination Authoring” space, and goes to the governance tab. Reviewing change sets can also be done from the administration space.
   The “show” drop down in the upper right corner can toggle the view to show change sets in various states. The “Active” setting shows all change sets that have not been published or canceled.
2. Find the change Set and click “Approve Change Set” ()
   
3. Fill in the comment and click “OK”. The comments associated with a change set are visible under the history tab ()
   
4. Click “Publish Change set”, and then click “OK” in the dialog box that pops up (comment is already filled in) ()
   

Related links

1. Previous: Define Business Services Next: Work with Websphere Business Modeler
   
2. Modeling, developing, assembling, deploying and managing an application
3. Working with the Fabric templates in Business Space
4. Business Space Information Center
5. Getting Started with IBM WebSphere Business Services Fabric V6.1

6. IBM WBS Fabric Learning Resources