New Features › CA Process Automation Release 04.1.00

CA Process Automation Release 04.1.00

CA Process Automation Release 04.1.00 includes the following new features:

Common Script Editor

This advanced code editor lets you create, edit, and debug various types of scripting and markup languages.

Note: For more information about the CA Process Automation Code Editor, see "The CA Process Automation Code Editor" in the Content Designer Guide.

Process Documentation

Content designers can generate detailed process documentation, including visual representations of the process that feature details and dependencies at the process and the operator level. You can generate the process documentation in PDF format.

Note: For more information about process documentation, see the Content Designer Guide.

NTLM Pass-Through Authentication

EEM NTLM authentication lets you bypass entering credentials in the CA Process Automation login dialog and instead lets you log in to CA Process Automation using Windows credentials (through CA EEM). This feature applies when CA EEM is configured to use Microsoft Active Directory as the external user store and NTLM is enabled.

Note: For more information, see the following documentation:

• "Prerequisites for Configuring NTLM Authentication," "Reference Global Users and Global Groups from Microsoft Active Directory," "Enable NTLM Pass-Through Authentication After Installation," and "Upgrade Prerequisites" in the Installation Guide.
• "Configure Web Services," "How Authentication and Authorization Work," and "Oasis Configuration Properties File" in the Content Administrator Guide.
• "HTTP URL Information," "HTTP Proxy Information," and "HTTP Operators: Common Output Ports" in the Content Designer Reference.
• "Google Chrome Fails First Attempt to Log Out Users Logged in Using NTLM" in the Release Notes.

Form Designer User Experience

When content designers open a start request form or an interaction request form from the Library Browser, the Form Designer editor opens. The Form Designer editor provides the following new capabilities:

• Added support for SOAP and RESTful Web services in forms, such as populating form elements using SOAP / RESTful APIs.
• Copy and paste for easy re-use of form elements.
• Drag and drop form elements.
• Tooltips for form element properties.
• Common JavaScript Editor.

Note: For details about the Form Designer, see the "Forms" chapter of the Content Designer Guide, particularly "The Form Designer."

Management and Performance enhancements

Administrators with Domain_Admin permissions, such as members of the PAMAdmins group, can disable (or re-enable) the following options:

• Operator level reporting.
• Operator level recovery.
• Process level reporting.
• Process level logging.

Note: For details about configuring these options, see "Configure Domain Properties" in the Content Administrator Guide.

Catalyst Interoperability and API

The Catalyst container and Catalyst Process Automation Services are both embedded in CA Process Automation. Communication is optimized among the Catalyst container, Catalyst Process Automation Services, and CA Process Automation.

The following enhancements are included in the current release:

• Catalyst 3.2 is certified.
• RESTful API enhancements for headless control and monitoring impact the following: query and control processes, interaction request forms, start request forms, datasets, module configuration, content import and export, and alerts.
• Catalyst Process Automation Services is enabled by default.

Note: For details, see the "RESTful API Reference" chapter in the Web Services API Reference. See also "Apache Load Balancer Configuration for Catalyst RESTful API (Windows)" in the Installation Guide.

Operator Enhancements

Content designers have two new operators and updated support by SOAP operators.

• Process Progress operator

  You can set the progress of a process using the Process Progress operator. You can monitor the process progress through user-defined reports and in the Operations tab (Process Instances link).

  Note: For details, see "Process Progress Operator" under "Standard Operators" in the Content Designer Reference.

• Apply XSLT operator

  This operator lets you to apply a predefined style sheet to transform an XML source document to another presentation-oriented format, such as HTML, XHTML, or SVG.

  Note: For details, see the "Apply XSLT Operator" under "Utilities" in the Content Designer Reference.

• SOAP operators

  These operators support NT LAN Manager (NTLM) authentication to authenticate clients to a Windows server.

  Note: For details, see "Soap Call Data Parameters" and "SOAP Call Data Properties" in the Content Designer Reference.

Process Management

Content designers can better manage processes through the following enhancements:

• Content designers can use the duration attribute to specify the expected duration for a process or report. This enables designers to track the actual duration compared against the expected duration.

  Note: For details, see "Define the Run Duration for a Process" in the Library Browser section of the Content Designer Guide.

• Content designers can now add progress markers as part of their process definition. This lets production users track processes based on progress.

  Note: For details, see the "Process Progress Operator" and the "setProcessProgress" method in the Content Designer Reference. The "Process Instances" section in the Production User Guide now includes Progress as a displayed attribute.

Content Creation and Management

Content creation and management enhancements impact custom operators and content management.

Custom Operators:

• Ability to hide variable from output dataset.

  Note: For details, see "Custom Operator: Dataset Tab" in the Content Designer Guide.

• Ability to create module level configuration so that configuration data (such as named connections) can be shared between multiple custom operators.

  Note: For details on custom operator groups, see the following documentation:

  • To create a custom operator group, see Custom Operator: Settings Tab" in the Content Designer Guide.
  • To define parameters for a custom operator group and publishing the custom group to the Modules tab in the same Domain, see "Configure and Publish a Custom Operator Group" in the Content Designer Guide.
  • To publish a custom operator group configuration to another Domain, see "Import an Object, a Folder, or a Package" in the Content Designer Guide.
  • To configure (or delete) a custom operator group, see "Configure Values for a Custom Operator Group" and "Delete a Custom Operator Group Configuration" in the Content Administrator Guide.
  • To override custom operator group values at the environment level, see "Enable or Disable a Custom Operator Group" and "Override Inherited Values for a Custom Operator Group" in the Content Administrator Guide.
  • To review the new CA EEM resource class Group Configuration and the related action key Group_Config_Admin, see the "Permissions Reference" section for in the Content Administrator Guide.
  • To extend the configuration right to content designers, see "Example: Grant Designers the Ability to Configure Groups for Custom Operators" in the Content Administrator Guide.
  • To review task flow, see "Scenario: How to Work with Custom Operator Groups" on the CA Process Automation section of the Support website.

Content Management

Content designers or administrators can specify a release-specific value for the new Release Version attribute for objects to be packaged for export for a release. The exporter can specify that this attribute is to be nonmodifiable in the import environment. When this attribute is locked, content designers can easily identify whether objects customized for a specific release have been changed since being imported to the production environment.

Note: For details about release versions, see the following topics in the "Release Objects to Another Environment" chapter of the Content Designer Guide:

• "Release Versions."
• "View Release Version Information."
• "Set the Release Version of Objects to Export."
• "Export an Object, a Folder, or a Package" addresses how to set the Export Release Versions in Nonmodifiable Mode option.
• "Release Version and Baseline Status of Imported Objects."

The Content Administrator Guide contains topics in the section "How to Prepare the Production Environment for a New Release" that touch on release versions.

Reporting

Reporting is enhanced in the following ways:

• Extended data in the reporting database is to be in line with Process Watch: custom instance name, duration, progress, organizational information, parent-child information.
• New database views provide easy access to PAM historic data and replaces PAM legacy reporting DB schema. You can use the following database views to generate the user-defined reports:
  • Process_Instances.
  • Automation_Objects.
  • Operator_Instances.

  Note: For details, see "Reporting DB Views" in the Production User Guide.

• New: Process Duration Status Report.

  Note: This new report is referenced in the "Working with Predefined Reports" topic in the Production User Guide.

• All reports updated to leverage schema updates.