Name: Using Business Processes and Tasks in SAP Commerce Cloud
Uploaded: 2024-6-3
Duration: 261 s
Description: This video gives you an overview of business processes and tasks in SAP Commerce Cloud.

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<div><div><div><div><div><div><div>This video gives you an overview of business processes and tasks in SAP Commerce Cloud. <br><br></div></div></div></div></div></div></div>

Using Business Processes and Tasks in SAP Commerce Cloud

Hi, in this video, we are going to talk about business processes and tasks in SAP Commerce Cloud. We are going to introduce the topic by talking about what a business process is, then how it is supported within SAP Commerce, by illustrating a simple example for business process definition. We are also going to briefly talk about the task engine, which is the basic of the process support. Finally, a simple example is shown to demonstrate how to use task service. So what is a business process? In general, a business process describes a sequence of steps or activities that is followed repeatedly, which is usually modeled as a flowchart, in which there may be loops and parallel paths joining a number of steps. Each step specifies what step should follow it, eventually providing a number of possible steps, the choice of which is based on the output of the preceding step. In SAP Commerce Cloud, the process engine is used to create, model, run and monitor the business processes. It guarantees that steps are performed in the right order and on the right condition. The business process is defined through a XML based process definition file, which is composed of a set of nodes that are connected with each other through their IDs. Each node represent a step in a given process, supported node types include action node, wait node, notify node and end node. Action nodes are the nodes that realize the process logic, it means we should also provide concrete implementation in java code and configure it in Spring. And business processes can also be made cluster aware to ensure high availability and easy load distribution. By default, a node in a business process definition is executed asynchronously, you can also enable a synchronous execution mechanism on action nodes. With support for scripting and the dynamic process definition, it is possible to declare not only the structure of the business process but also to define the behavior directly in the xml which defines the process. Let‘s take a look at this simple example, where a customer is not so satified with a product he purchased, and clicks on “return“ button to return the order. The system can trigger the following process. It first tries to generate a return shipping label, then waits for the result of the label generation. If the label is successfully generated, an email is generated with the label and sent over to the customer. In between if anything goes wrong, the process goes to an error node. Accordingly, the sequence of steps can be implemented in a process definition xml file, where an action node is used to call an external logistic partner server to generate a return shipping label. A wait node is used to wait for the asynchronous positive response from the label generating server. And another action node to call an email server to send the email with the generated return shipping label. As of task service, it is the technical foundation of process engine, since all the processes that are loaded into SAP Commerce, are assembled into tasks and executed one by one. All tasks can be scheduled based on time or event. As you might have noticed, tasks share commonalities with cronjobs, but are more lightweight, therefore come with smaller set of functionality, meanwhile can be implemented more easily; Very importantly, tasks can also be made cluster aware by setting different properties. Now let‘s take a look at a simple example about how to use task service. First of all, you should define a java class which implements interface TaskRunner, encapsulate all your business logic in the method run. Then declare this java class as a Spring bean. In order to fire a time based task scheduling in your code, a TaskModel instance will be created, set this task with a specific action bean name and execution time accordingly. Lastly, invoke taskService method scheduleTask with this new task as a parameter. That's all for now, for more details please refer to our online document and other videos,