IBM BPM Interview Questions and Answers

Q1 : What is Tracking?
A : Tracking is:
1. To track a specific value throughout the process we will use the tracking group.
2. To track a specific value, it goes to the Authorizing environment. Then go to file option. Then select the option Send to performance data warehouse option.

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Q2 : Explain about Durable?
A : Even though the client is down, the message stays with the event manager. After the client is up, the message is delivered, this is termed as durable.

Q3 : Explain About Reports?
A : We need to report the data in different formats Ex: The Bar graph, Pie graph, etc.
Reports are displayed using Scoreboards.
Ad-hoc Reports: To create reports at any time.

Q4 : Explain about Routing?
A : Routing is mainly used to assign the task to a particular Participant or Particular group. Same participant performing one or more tasks. (Or) Assigning the same participant to one or more activities.

Q5 : What is Intermediate message Event Listener?
A : An intermediate message Event takes place in running the business process.
They tell the Business process to move a token forward in the process.
An Intermediate listener moves forward only if event output data matches with the co-relation data in the business process.

Q6 : What are the different types of Event Listener’s?
A : There are two types of Event Listeners, they are:
1. Start message Event Listener.
2. Intermediate message Event Listener.

Q7 : What is an Event Listener?
A : Event Listener:
1. An event listener is a widget that is added to our BPD. It tells our process to do something if an event occurs.
2. An event is anything that may happen outside our processor in our process that affects how our process runs.
3. An event listener cannot be added to the service layer. Presently they are used in our business process layer.

Q8 : What is the Start message Event Listener?
A : When the UCA reaches its endpoint. It will cause a new Business process to start.
The output of the UCA should be used to set the starting values of variables within the business process.
There is no concept of co-relation in start message event because it is creating a new BPD instance and such there is no data to compare it to.

Q9 : What is UCA? (Under Cover Agent)
A : Under Cover Agents are used to sending and receiving a message within teamwork. The body of the message is defined by teamwork’s service that is attached to the UCA.

Q10 : What is a Durable Subscription?
A : When a message is sent to an offline user, the message waits in the queue and gets delivered when the user appears online again. This process is called “Durable Subscription”.

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Q11 : What are the key components of BPM?
A : The key components of BPM are:

1. Process Server
2. Process Designer
3. Process Center
4. Process Center Console
5. Performance Data Warehouse
6. Process Portal
7. Process Admin Console

Q12 : What is a Process in IBM BPM?
A : A process is like a Program that does works inside Teamwork. It has a starting point and at least one exit point.

Q13 : How will you start BPM from outside?
A : There are 4 ways:

  1. Expose as a web service like WSDL and call it from outside and inside the BPM call in Javascript ‘startBPMByProcessName()’.
  2. BPM API exposes as rest service to start the BPM process.
  3. Through JMS, we can start bpm process.
  4. Through Java API we can start the bpm process.

Q14 : How will you maintain version in bpm?
A : We can create a snapshot.

Q15 : What is serialization?
A : Serialization is mainly used to convert the XML to the Teamwork’s Object.
When we use web service integration service we will use serialization. The output of web service is XML So, we need to convert it to Team work’s Object.

Q16 : What is sub-process?
A : A subprocess represents a collection of logically related steps contained within a parent process. You can view a subprocess as a single activity, providing a simplified, high-level view of the parent process, or you can drill into the subprocess for a more detailed view of its contents.
Subprocesses can contain swimlanes that are distinct from the parent process. For example, activities in your subprocess can be carried out by a set of participants that is different from the set of participants that carry out the activities in the parent process.
Like other activities, subprocesses can be configured to run multiple times within the execution of the parent process by configuring looping behavior on the subprocess activity element in the parent process.

Q17 : What is an Activity in IBM BPM?
A : An Activity represents a logical unit of work that can be executed at runtime by a Human or  System.

Q18 : What is A Coach?
A : Coach is a Human activity in BPM Lombardi. When we build human service We usually include Coaches.
Which provide the interface for the end-user interaction.

Q19 : What has changed in coaches in IBM BPM V8?
A : Coach views are a major addition. Improved error handling, and termination handling. Content Management integration, and other bug fixes

Q20 : How will you access processes in BPM?
A : You can Start, Stop, Control and Monitor Processes using Process Portal.

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Q21 : Explain the difference between the Coaches and Coach Views.
A : Coaches contain one or more Coach Views. The Coach Views provide the user interface elements and layout for the Coach.
Each Coach View can contain one or more other Coach Views, which creates a parent-child relationship between these Coach Views.
At runtime, the parent Coach View is rendered as a tag that contains a nested tag for each child Coach View.
Each Coach View can also have a binding to a business object, CSS code to control its visual layout, and JavaScript to define its behavior.
Coach Views are reusable so you can create a library of common user interfaces and behavior. You can combine these common user interfaces to rapidly develop new Coaches.
The Coaches toolkit that is included with IBM BPM contains a set of common user interfaces that are called stock controls. You can include these stock controls when you are creating your own Coach Views.

Q22 : What are Variables (Business Objects) in IBM BPM?
A : Business objects are called variables in Teamworks represent the data that provides the data that provides the business context to a running process. There are two types of variables -Simple And Complex variables have different scopes- private Input and Output.

Q23 : How do you perform validation on Coach Views?
A : To validate the data that is in the Coach before the flow proceeds to the next step in the service flow, add a validation node to the flow. The validation node can be a nested service or a server script. The server script is the simpler implementation although the nested service provides greater flexibility.
Example server script,
tw.local.validate = new tw.object.CoachValidation();
if (tw.local.application.name == “”){
tw.system.addCoachValidationError(tw.local.validate, “tw.local.application.name”,
“The name cannot be empty.”);
}

Q24 : What is BPD?
A : To model a process, you must create a business process definition (BPD). A BPD is a reusable model of a process, defining what is common to all runtime instances of that process model.
A Business Process Definition (BPD) can include a lane for each system or group of users who participate in a process. A lane is a container for all the activities to be carried out by a specific group of users or by a system.

Q25 : What is Teamworks?
A : Teamworks is a BPM tool developed by Lombardi Software.
Teamworks architecture enables all groups within your enterprise to collaborate to design and deploy efficient processes.
Teamworks also allows you to manage and analyze process performance.
Teamworks is having Eclipse-based Authoring Environment integrates with your other development tools.

Q26 : What is the snapshot in BPM?
A : Snapshot is as simple as Version management.

Q27 : How a BPD can be divided into?
A : The BPD can be divided into Lanes and Milestones. The horizontal lines are called Lanes and vertical ones are called Milestones.

Q28 : What are Teamworks Components?
A : Shared Model: Stores all Process, Services, Performance Data, Business Events, and Conditions.
Process Server: Executes the Process and Services that authors build using Teamworks Authoring Environment.
Performance Server: Manages and aggregate Process Performance data and monitors business events and conditions.
Server Consoles: provide interfaces that enables an administrator to configure and maintain the Process Server and performance Server other users may have limited access to change password and perform other basic tasks.
Authoring Environment: Eclipse-based development Environment consists of several interfaces that enable authors to Model, Simulate and Inspect processes. Available interfaces include Service Modeler, Process Inspector, Process Molder.
Process portal: Enables process participants to perform assigned task, view the history of task, launch any processes or services that are attached to task and view the performance of their processes and teams. Tools available from the process portal include Scoreboards.

Q29 : How do you generate a unique ID for a Coach View at runtime?
A : In some situations, you might want to use the ID attribute for your DOM elements within a coach view. However, all DOM IDs must be globally unique. For example, during collaboration, the default highlighting behavior is implemented based on a unique DOM ID. To ensure a unique ID, you can use the $$viewDOMID$$ placeholder keyword. At runtime, this keyword will be replaced by the Coach View DOM ID.

Q30 : What is BPC and how can it be useful?
A : BPC is a Business Process Choreography. It used for monitor Process Instance, Process Template and human task Instance, Human task Template.

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Q31 : What are different types of Human Tasks?
A : The different types of Human Tasks are:

  • To-do task – a service schedules a piece of work for a person to perform.
  • Invocation task – a person uses a service.
  • Collaboration task – one person assigns work to another person.
  • Administration task – a person is granted administrative powers over an activity or process.

Q32 : What is the difference between process app and toolkit?
A : Process App is deployable but toolkit is not deployable and it should be integrated.

Q33 : In production one instance has been failed due to some business object has bad data or null values, How will you inject data on runtime in production?
A : IBPM provides some rest API which operation name is setData through that we can inject values.

Q34 : How do you fire a boundary event pro-grammatically?
A : this.context.trigger(callback);

Q35 : What is Durable Subscription?
A : When a message is sent to a user who is offline, the message waits in the queue and gets delivered when the user appears online again. This phenomenon is called as “Durable Subscription”.