It seems that when BPM processes are used to implement case activities, there can only be one BPM author at a time. In BPM, you only lock the artifact you are editing. In case, you only lock the P8 workflow you are editing. Now in BAW, the first-mover locks both the whole process application AND parts of the case solution, if one opens the process designer via the case activity. So this is a significant regression and limitation. Please correct me if I am wrong.

What are your workarounds?

Working in a separate process applications and then copying the mostly-ready artifacts into the main application works to some extent, but eventually you want to adapt, fine-tune, unit-test and what not concurrently.


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Mattias Edling
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When I click the three-dot menu on the workflow center card for the case solution, I can select "Open in Process Designer" and edit artifacts in parallel even though my colleague has a lock on the case solution. This is promising, although a little peculiar.

The next step is to understand how saves to the contained process application relate to commits and deploys of the enclosing case solution. For one ongoing case with ongoing process instance, the process application saves had immediate effect (both a coach and the actual process flow), so it appears that the BPM tip is always used, just like when developing a standalone process application. I suppose that a case solution commit is needed if one want to deploy to another environment, but we have not yet tried that.

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Mattias Edling
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My current advice, after designing for another two months and talking to colleagues with more experience of case&process hybrid solutions, is to not use internal process applications at all, because you lose both the ability to revert changes and the feature of migrating process instances (no improvements, no bug fixes). Use a standalone process application instead and select existing process when implementing case activities. You can still retrieve case-role based teams, access currentProcessInstance.parentCase and get and set case properties within services.

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Mattias Edling
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Original Message:
Sent: Tue October 12, 2021 09:47 AM
From: Mattias Edling
Subject: Concurrent editing of process application contained in a case solution?

When I click the three-dot menu on the workflow center card for the case solution, I can select "Open in Process Designer" and edit artifacts in parallel even though my colleague has a lock on the case solution. This is promising, although a little peculiar.

The next step is to understand how saves to the contained process application relate to commits and deploys of the enclosing case solution. For one ongoing case with ongoing process instance, the process application saves had immediate effect (both a coach and the actual process flow), so it appears that the BPM tip is always used, just like when developing a standalone process application. I suppose that a case solution commit is needed if one want to deploy to another environment, but we have not yet tried that.

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Mattias Edling
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