Automatically “Get Next” is a common feature in business
process, IBM Case Manager (ICM) as an application which can conveniently unites
content, process and people, certainly it has this feature to provide flexible
process controls, this blog entry will show you how “Get Next” works in ICM 5.2
and how to customize it to get next without showing the work items list.
Difference
between ICM 5.1.1 and ICM 5.2
Assume you open a work item which is not the first one in
In-basket, in ICM 5.1.1, after all the following work item has been processed,
it can go back to the first one to process the rest; But from ICM 5.2, if a
case worker doesn’t choose the first one to start, we think he doesn’t want to
process the first one, so “Get Next” won’t go back to work items which are
above the one just he opened. This means in ICM 5.2, “Get Next” will only
handle the work items which are sequenced following the one you opened, after
all done, even there are still some work items in In-basket (which above the
one you opened), it will pop up a dialog says no more work items to deal
with.
Enable
Get Next feature in ICM 5.2
By default, get next feature is not enabled; this means when
you complete a current work item, it will automatically close the work detail
page. There are two ways to enable get next by the following steps:
1. Open Work Details page in Page Designer.
2. Open Edit Setting window of work item
toolbar, switch to Toolbarstab.
3. The first way is to double click to edit “Complete”
button, you should be able to see the selection “Automatically get the next
work item”. If you select it, every time a case worker clicks Complete button
in Work Detail page during runtime, it will automatically retrieve the next
work item until all the following work items in In-basket has been processed.
4. Another way is to add a separate “Open Next Work Item”
action.
In this way, it will add a check box with label “Get Next”
to work item toolbar. If you mark “Automatically get the next work item”
when adding this action, the checkbox will be selected by default, and vice
versa.
The second way is suggested since it more intuition, and you
can decide whether to get next in runtime, not to speak this setting can
overwrite the setting in “Complete” button.
Other
notable features about Get Next
1. Get Next won’t deal with locked work item which is locked
by other users, but if the next work item is locked by current user himself, it
will directly open the work item in edit mode.
2. Get Next will always open the next work item in current
work detail page, even the next work item is from different task type with
different work detail page.
Customize
Get Next feature to support the push-only mode
By default, you will see all the work item list and can
choose anyone to process, but under some circumstance, user is expected not to
see the whole list, every time he login the application, there is only one work
item displays and he can only process by sequence. This is push-only mode, like
custom service in bank or insurance company. Customer supporters are not
expected to choose a favorite custom to service; they just service for any
custom the system push to them.
To achieve this, first, we need to hidden
In-basket, which can be easily done by hidden default Work page.
Open target solution, switch to Roles tab,
click to open target role, then on Pages tab, remove Work page.
Second, we need
to customize the Work Detail page to retrieve the first work item when work
details page loaded. This can be done by the following steps:
1. Open Work Details page in Page Designer.
2. Add a Script Adapter widget to page then click the little
black triangle on the top right, select Hide Widget to hide
it. Open hidden area, you can see the hidden widget you just added. There is
another default Script Adatper1 by default, ignore it since we won’t use it.
3. Click the Edit Settings icon on the
Script Adapter widget and insert the script below into the JavaScript
text area.
var self = this;
var role = self.role;
require(["icm/model/WorkItem","icm/util/WorkItemHandler"],function(WorkItem, WorkItemHandler){
role.retrieveWorklists(function(inbaskets){
if(inbaskets.length > 0){ /*if there are
multiple In-baskets*/
var inbasket = inbaskets[0]; /*we choose the first
one, this should be first role's In-basket*/
inbasket.retrieveWorkItems(function(resultSet){
var items = resultSet.getItems(); /*fetch
the work items in this In-basket*/
if(items.length >0){ /*if there are
multiple work items*/
var first = items[0]; /*get the first one*/
first = WorkItem.fromWorkItem(first); /*this is to change an ICN work item to the format of ICM work
item*/
var workItemHandler = newWorkItemHandler(self); /*open it*/
workItemHandler.handleCurrentPageWorkItem(first); /*process the next first work item*/
}
});
}
});
});
4. Open the Wire Events window and
select Script Adapter, wire Page Container widget
to send Page Opened event to Script Adapter.
When opening the link, it looks like the picture as below.
No Work page and In-basket shown, and directly displays a work item.
Select Get Next checkbox and process the
work item, it will automatically push next work item, when all done, the dialog
“There are no more work items to be processed in this in-basket or the work
item that you handled is at the end of this in-basket.” displays.
Summary
This blog entry introduces Get Next feature in ICM 5.2 and
give an example on how to customize it to push only mode, hope this can give
you as a reference when you using this feature.
