Organizations create and consume reports, pictures, spreadsheets, e-forms, and other documents of all types in the course of daily business. Many of these files are critical to the business processes of the organization, and as such must be managed and readily available for use with business process execution. Typically these files are stored and managed in one or more content management (CM) systems throughout the organization.

webMethods Content Service Platform (CSP) not only serves as a content management system, but it also provides you with the ability to connect to, write to, and read from many supported third-party content management products, such as instances of Microsoft Sharepoint or EMC Documentum. In Software AG Designer, a task developer can create task types that allow users to access CSP content, to add content to the task and the repository, to manage attachments to content document types stored in the repository, and to upload and download e-forms stored in webMethods Content Service Platform.

These CSP-enabled tasks are typically integrated into business process models created in Software AG Designer. A user task step in a process model can start a task type instance, which is assigned to an appropriate user, role, or group, with the appropriate content document types available to the task user from the task interface.

For example, for an auto insurance company, suppose a new accident claim report is created and stored in webMethods Content Service Platform or an integrated CM system. The arrival of this new claim report in the CM system triggers the start of a new claim business process instance, with the claim report as part of the process. A user task in the process is started and assigned to a claims adjuster, arriving in her task inbox with the claim report as part of the task data.

While working on the task and investigating the claim, the adjuster takes several digital photos of the damage. These digital photo files can be attached to the claim form content document type, and are added to the repository, where they are available for access by others. The adjuster can also edit the information in the claim form while working on the task.

When the adjuster finishes investigating the claim and completes the task, the business process instance receives the updated information resulting from the investigation and continues to the next step.

A task developer can also implement interaction with e-forms stored in webMethods Content Service Platform or an integrated CM system. In an interface that is separate from the content management interface, a user can download and upload e-forms stored in the repository.

For more information about webMethods Content Service Platform, see Implementing webMethods Content Service Platform for BPM. For information about integrating task types with CSP, see webMethods BPM Task Development Help.