Hi there “Process Automation” fans,

Welcome to a new installment of “Process Automation” tips.

Not the first one for this year as It took a while before it was GA, but “OpenText Process Automation” 25.1 (Q1 in 2025) is here. Let’s see if it’s worth it as in the first, “special”, and “secret” session, I hear a splendid feature passing where we (as low-code developers) are in control on the order of actions for the business ‘Rule’ BB…Keep on reading!

Extend your knowledge (with a beer or a soda and maybe some brown-fruit!?) on the update of this new release!

Let get right into it…

I just do a fresh installation (because we can); So, re-check the installation. This post reviews the OpenText Process Automation CE 25.1 Release Notes. We’ll jump through each feature one by one to figure out what value it brings, how it works, and how we can benefit from it.

The quick tag is also working again at #ProcessAutomation25.1!

The first findings during my installation:

• There was no JMX-credentials settings screen during the installation wizard!? So, where to set it and can we still connect to our JVM to watch the “Beans”? Well, just tried, and it still works (and didn’t add any credentials at all…weird!? #SECURITY_BREACH 🚨)
• The software package itself misses some components; Like OTDS, IntelligentViewing, Brava! (although it does include the IGCKey.lic!?), and the “Gateway” (for mobile). Looks like we move back again from “Suite”-package to “Platform”-package. Meaning we need to download all the missing stuff ourselves; Starting with OTDS (which apparently isn’t a product!), but that’s not for this post!

🆕 Update on the available changes in 25.1 🆕

Because of the late release for this version, I already joined some insiders OpenText sessions where they expose great stuff (incl. Q&A). One of the most fascinating features for this release is the multiple actions for one ‘Rule’ BB. We can finally order our actions and be in control what executes when. For the rest it looks to me like keeping support, maintain, stabilize, and a little expansion. Let’s see…it’s always nice to try and learn new delivered features!

Add multiple action with Rule

For this, we first start with a mature ‘project’ entity looking like this (a task on your own):

Notes:

• Update the ‘Create’ form to something nice.
• Update the ‘lyt_default’ layout with proper panels for the related building blocks.
• Make the properties solid (like pure true|false on the Boolean and the currency selection).

Do a publication and create a new instance in runtime. When all fine, return to design-time and create a first ‘Rule’ BB for the entity:

Read the information carefully and keep the next notes in mind:

• ‘Custom Action’ equals the good old ‘Action’ rules
• ‘Uniqueness’ is still the same
• The ‘Event’ types of BB are now “splitted” (or better “segregated”) and both support multiple sequential actions
• Read the low-code guide on “Event rules” (under “Adding business logic”) to see the difference
  • Application UI is for ‘Apply style’, ‘Disable’, ‘Hide’, ‘Set property’, ‘Show error’, ‘Show information’, ‘Show warning’, and ‘Start process’.
  • Functional UI is for ‘Send email’, ‘Set property’, ‘Show error’, and ‘Start process’.
• You can only add max. 20 actions to one Rule. Well, if you get it to twenty actions let me know as you’re probably on a “mission impossible” path!
• The rule itself has a condition and each action has its specific condition; So, it can get complex, pretty fast.
• What about previous “old” rules on the solution after upgrade? Well, they will magically show up with the old editor!

I wonder how this impacts an upgrade especially on larger projects using entity inheritance and gluing everything with everything like a spider-web of logics and long lists of business rules…I’ve seen them in my career; Well, good luck!

Let’s not start dramatic; Lots of customers asked for this feature, now it’s here, then let’s use it…

Maybe it’s just simple me, but was it not much easier to keep the old ‘Rule’ BB in place and make sure to apply an order index value? The big issue was that we’re not in control of the order the applied rules…We are in control now on the action of a specific Rule, but still not the order of the rules itself. Again, it’s probably me seeing death horses…Let’s first figure it out and play with it with input on my own forum question!

The first great question to answer; “Set property” is “Application” AND “Functional”, so does it matter which one to use? SPOILER alert…It does!…Via the “Application” event you get direct feedback when you tab out of the field where “Functional” does it more async when you hover away from the form and when the time is ready to update. This smells like short-lived/long-lived in BPM land; Interesting!
During my first quick play (see below) I also noticed another difference tracking the history! The “Functional” rule commits each action; The “Application” rule only commits the last applicable action! Aha…That’s why it’s so blazing fast!

Another great first question to answer; Is the next action “aware” of the previous action on all the “Set Property” value sets? Well, I quickly conclude that when you set a value in the previous action, the next action is indeed aware of its value!

In programming logic this would look like this:

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String prj_name = "run ef";
//Condition on the complete 'Rule' BB
if(prj_name.equals("run ef")) { //ef = Event Functional
  prj_name = "test1ef";
  prj_name = "test3ef";
  prj_name = "test2ef";
  //Condition on the last action within the 'Rule' BB
  if(prj_name.equals("test2ef")) {
    prj_name = "test4ef";
  }
  assertThat(prj_name).isEqualTo("test4ef"); //In my case TRUE!
}

So, the test (on “Functional”) from above has this outcome in the history:

While the other test (on “Application” with value run ea) has a history like this:

It’s not even recording by own input run ea…interesting!

This is what I’ve built to answer my two initial questions (both with equals actions):

Ohwwww…don’t make this mistake to check a value including the double quotes! So, like this: prj_name equals to "testef" (see also the red arrow above)…Those double quotes apply already in the backend code! Just so you don’t make the same mistake I did which caused too much of my valuable time.

Well, I found the answers on my critical questions and the underlying problem still exists. Which is that you still don’t know which ‘Rule’ BB executes first. The only way to solve this is to make sure those “old” rules combine into a new multi-action ‘Rule’ BB…What I said before; Good luck on the conversion path!

…

Off-course I tried to add twenty actions for a rule, but the creation button grays out eventually and when you see RED exclamation marks you have an indication on a wrong configured action:

It also feels a bit strange to hit the “+”-sign to re-edit and existing action; In case you want to change it from a “Set property” action to a “Show error” action. A task on your own to eXperience!

I say that we’re happy campers with this new feature where we can condense the number of ‘Rule’ BB implementation with a “more complex”, but “in control” new type of ‘Rule’ BB.

…

WAIT….I also saw something else (the small letters of the feature delivery)! The “Application” type of Rule BB is only possible on the event “A property changes”:

It’s not a drop-down to select anything else, but do we want to have it on anything else; Like on an “A relation changes”? You tell me, but I know the answer already! #FEATURE_REQUEST

Enhancements on Single entity search using entity lists

This is not a new feature, but an “enhancement” on a current feature! It went to GA already in 24.2, and you can read about it here including a deep-dive on the database impact!

For this release we get support for sub-typed entities, and the customized-entity (I guess “customized” from the identity component or any other third-party solution). There is also support now for searches over the ‘Discussion’ BB and ‘Email’ BB.

In quick overview, it’s a 3-steps configuration:

1. Set ‘Include in search’ on a ‘Text’-property!
2. Configure the search-index in /app/admin
3. Search (case-insensitive!) in runtime from a result list

Define a custom message for Form mandatory fields

Normally you would see something like this for a required field:

After a change on the form-element…

…you see something like this:

I was also curious if these messages are translatable from the project translation settings, but they are missing in action!? #SUPPORT

Support AppEnhancer in multi-tenant mode

“AppEnhancer”!? Formerly known as ApplicationXtender (AX). You can find some AppEnhancer content at this blog site; This is your best shot and this is the OpenText product page on the topic. Companies still use this (can I call it light-weight?) CMS and the OPA platform does have documentstore-connector options for it. It’s on my backlog to write something about it, but give me a comment below if it’s worth the time?

What’s new? Well “AppEnhancer” has multi tenancy support and the OPA integration is enhanced to work seamlessly together in this multi-tenant mode.

TomEE 10 support

We saw it already in the supported environments PDF during our own 25.1 installation guide. See also here on the discontinued TomEE 9.X version!

New construct for RPA activity in a BPM

RPA? Stand for Robot Process Automation and it explains already itself. If you have repeatable tasks to do, send them to an RPA vendor and let them so the magic. Read here and here for a head start on RPA via the OPA platform in your BPMs.

For this release we get a new ‘Construct’ as reusable component in our BPMs:

For the general tab I see support for UIPath with a free-to-try option. Searching for “Operations orchestration” (as second option) brings me back to OpenText (over MicroFocus)…Interesting; It’s a whole new world! 🤗

It goes too far to dive into all the details, but I love to have a chat with you when you’re using this RPA-feature…I’m just wondering about the use-cases in combination with “Case management”; Let me know…

Discontinued and deprecated features

No deprecations, but we do have a discontinuation of TomEE 9.x support (as already explained above).

That’s a “DONE” on OpenText Process Automation Platform 25.1; The playground is open on further consumption with interesting new features for this Q1 2025 release. Have a perfect weekend, and we see each other next week, with a brand-new “Process Automation Tips” post.

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