Publish Business Process

Concepts

Search for	Example	Results
A single word	`cat`	Topics that contain the word "cat". You will also find its grammatical variations, such as "cats".
A phrase. You can specify that the search results contain a specific phrase.	`"cat food"` (quotation marks)	Topics that contain the literal phrase "cat food" and all its grammatical variations. Without the quotation marks, the query is equivalent to specifying an OR operator, which finds topics with one of the individual words instead of the phrase.

Search for	Operator	Example
Two or more words in the same topic	`AND` `and` `+` (plus symbol) `&` (ampersand)	`cat AND dog` `"cat food"+milk` `"cat food"&"dog food"`
Either word in a topic	`OR` `or` `\|` (pipe)	`cat OR dog` `cat \| dog`
Topics that do not contain a specific word or phrase	`NOT` `not` `!` (exclamation point)	`NOT cat` `! dog`
Topics that contain one string and do not contain another	`^` (caret)	`cat ^ mouse`
A combination of search types	`( )` parentheses	`cat + (dog \| mouse)` `cat \| dog + (! mouse)`

Business processes tailor the approval policies to business needs. A business process along with its parameters make an approval policy.

The Organization Administrator can publish business processes. Processes should remain unpublished until they are fully designed and tested and are approved for use. Processes must be published before they are available to use as policies. You can publish business processes that are currently unpublished or that have changed since they were published.

Business Process Versions

As long as a business process is unpublished, Service Manager Service Portal does not assign a version to it.

When a business process is initially published, Service Manager Service Portal assigns version 1 to it.

If you edit a published business process, the Process Detail view displays the current working business process definition at the top and the current published version (with its version number) at the bottom. Contains unpublished changes is displayed to remind you that changes to the business process have not yet been published.

When you republish the business process, Service Manager Service Portal increments the version number. If the business process is republished, it creates a new version of that business process which is related to all the business processes in that branch of the tree. The business process name is NOT unique across versions of that business process.

Note Currently, you can only use the latest published business process for an approval policy.

If you potentially may want to revert to a previous business process version, clone that process before making changes.

Business Process Used as Approval Policy

Business processes are used by the Policies application as approval policies for request fulfillment (see Policies). If you publish a business process that already has a policy using an older business process version, the policy continues to use the older version. To upgrade to the latest version, you must go to Policies application to edit the policy and select the same approval process (see Edit Policy Details for instructions). The process selector always shows the latest business process version; therefore, after saving, the policy is upgraded to use the latest version.

This allows you to have a Production policy and Test policy using the same approval process. When you make changes in the process and publish it, you can upgrade the Test policy first, and try it on some test catalog item that is not visible to customers. If it works well, you can also upgrade Production policy. If you had upgraded Production policy immediately, you risk breaking new Service Manager Service Portal orders if your process contained an error.

Tasks

To publish a business process:

From the Launchpad, click the Business Processes application. The Business Processes view is displayed.

In the Business Processes view, click the vertical ellipses

next to the business process you want to publish and select Publish. The business process is published.

Note You can also publish a business process from the Process Detail view when you click the vertical ellipses and select Publish.