IBM BPM Interview Questions and Answers

If you’re looking for IBM BPM Interview Questions & Answers for Experienced or Freshers, you are at right place. There are a lot of opportunities from many reputed companies in the world. According to research IBM BPM has a market share of about 6.7%. So, You still have the opportunity to move ahead in your career in IBM BPM Development. Mindmajix offers Advanced IBM BPM Interview Questions 2020 that helps you in cracking your interview & acquire dream career as IBM BPM Developer.

1.What is Tracking?

Ans:

Tracking is:

1. To track a specific value throughout the process we will use the tracking group.

2. To track a specific value, it goes to the Authorizing environment. Then go to file option. Then select the option Send to performance data warehouse option.

2.Explain about Durable?

Ans:

Even though the client is down, the message stays with the event manager. After the client is up, the message is delivered, this is termed as durable.

3.Explain About Reports?

Ans:

We need to report the data in different formats Ex: The Bar graph, Pie graph, etc.

Reports are displayed using Scoreboards.

Ad-hoc Reports: To create reports at any time.

4.Explain about Routing?

Ans:

Routing is mainly used to assign the task to a particular Participant or Particular group. Same participant performing one or more tasks. (Or) Assigning the same participant to one or more activities.

5.What is an Intermediate message Event Listener?

Ans:

• An intermediate message Event takes place in running the business process.
• They tell the Business process to move a token forward in the process.
• An Intermediate listener moves forward only if event output data matches with the correlation data in the business process.

6.What are the different types of Event Listener’s?

Ans:

There are two types of Event Listeners, they are:

• Start message Event Listener.
• Intermediate message Event Listener.

7.What is an Event Listener?

Ans:

Event Listener:

• An event listener is a widget that is added to our BPD. It tells our process to do something if an event occurs.
• An event is anything that may happen outside our processor in our process that affects how our process runs.
• An event listener cannot be added to the service layer. Presently they are used in our business process layer.

8.What is the Start message Event Listener?

Ans:

When the UCA reaches its endpoint. It will cause a new Business process to start.

The output of the UCA should be used to set the starting values of variables within the business process.

There is no concept of correlation in start message events because it is creating a new BPD instance and such there is no data to compare it to.

9.What is UCA? (Undercover Agent)

Ans:

Undercover Agents are used to sending and receiving a message within teamwork. The body of the message is defined by teamwork’s service that is attached to the UCA.

10.What is a Durable Subscription?

Ans:

When a message is sent to an offline user, the message waits in the queue and gets delivered when the user appears online again. This process is called “Durable Subscription”.

11.What are the key components of BPM?

Ans:

The key components of BPM are:

• Process Server
• Process Designer
• Process Center
• Process Center Console
• Performance Data Warehouse
• Process Portal
• Process Admin Console

12.What is a Process in IBM BPM?

Ans:

A process is like a Program that does work inside Teamwork. It has a starting point and at least one exit point.

13.How will you start BPM from outside?

Ans:

There are 4 ways:

• Expose as a web service like WSDL and call it from outside and inside the BPM call in Javascript ‘startBPMByProcessName()’.
• BPM API exposes a rest service to start the BPM process.
• Through JMS, we can start the bpm process.
• Through Java API we can start the bpm process.

14.How will you maintain the version in bpm?

Ans:

We can create a snapshot.

15.What is serialization?

Ans:

Serialization is mainly used to convert the XML to the Teamwork’s Object.

When we use web service integration service we will use serialization. The output of web service is XML So, we need to convert it to Team work’s Object.

16.What is sub-process?

Ans:

A subprocess represents a collection of logically related steps contained within a parent process. You can view a subprocess as a single activity, providing a simplified, high-level view of the parent process, or you can drill into the subprocess for a more detailed view of its contents.

Subprocesses can contain swimlanes that are distinct from the parent process. For example, activities in your subprocess can be carried out by a set of participants that is different from the set of participants that carry out the activities in the parent process.

Like other activities, subprocesses can be configured to run multiple times within the execution of the parent process by configuring looping behavior on the subprocess activity element in the parent process.

17.What is an Activity in IBM BPM?

Ans:

An Activity represents a logical unit of work that can be executed at runtime by a Human or  System.

18.What is A Coach?

Ans:

Coaching is a Human activity in BPM Lombardi. When we build human service We usually include Coaches.

Which provides the interface for the end-user interaction.

19.What has changed in coaches in IBM BPM V8?

Ans:

Coach views are a major addition. Improved error handling, and termination handling. Content Management integration, and other bug fixes

20. How will you access processes in BPM?

Ans:

You can Start, Stop, Control and Monitor Processes using Process Portal.

21.Explain the difference between the Coaches and Coach Views.

Ans:

Coaches contain one or more Coach Views. The Coach Views provide the user interface elements and layout for the Coach.

Each Coach View can contain one or more other Coach Views, which creates a parent-child relationship between these Coach Views.

At runtime, the parent Coach View is rendered as a

tag that contains a nested

tag for each child Coach View.

Each Coach View can also have a binding to a business object, CSS code to control its visual layout, and JavaScript to define its behavior.

Coach Views are reusable so you can create a library of common user interfaces and behavior. You can combine these common user interfaces to rapidly develop new Coaches.

The Coaches toolkit that is included with IBM BPM contains a set of common user interfaces that are called stock controls. You can include these stock controls when you are creating your own Coach Views.

22.What are Variables (Business Objects) in IBM BPM?

Ans:

Business objects are called variables in Teamworks represent the data that provides the data that provides the business context to a running process. There are two types of variables -Simple And Complex variables have different scopes- private Input and Output.

23.How do you perform validation on Coach Views?

Ans:

To validate the data that is in the Coach before the flow proceeds to the next step in the service flow, add a validation node to the flow. The validation node can be a nested service or a server script. The server script is the simpler implementation although the nested service provides greater flexibility.

Example server script,

24.What is BPD?

Ans:

To model a process, you must create a business process definition (BPD). A BPD is a reusable model of a process, defining what is common to all runtime instances of that process model.

A Business Process Definition (BPD) can include a lane for each system or group of users who participate in a process. A lane is a container for all the activities to be carried out by a specific group of users or by a system.

25. What is Teamworks?

Ans:

• Teamworks is a BPM tool developed by Lombardi Software.
• Teamworks architecture enables all groups within your enterprise to collaborate to design and deploy efficient processes.
• Teamworks also allows you to manage and analyze process performance.
• Teamworks has an Eclipse-based Authoring Environment integrated with your other development tools.

26.What is the snapshot in BPM?

Ans:

Snapshot is as simple as Version management.

27.How a BPD can be divided into?

Ans:

The BPD can be divided into Lanes and Milestones. The horizontal lines are called Lanes and vertical ones are called Milestones.

28.What are Teamworks Components?

Ans:

Shared Model: Stores all Process, Services, Performance Data, Business Events, and Conditions.

Process Server: Executes the Process and Services that authors build using Teamworks Authoring Environment.

Performance Server: Manages and aggregate Process Performance data and monitors business events and conditions.

Server Consoles: provide interfaces that enable an administrator to configure and maintain the Process Server and performance Server other users may have limited access to change password and perform other basic tasks.

Authoring Environment: Eclipse-based development Environment consists of several interfaces that enable authors to Model, Simulate and Inspect processes. Available interfaces include Service Modeler, Process Inspector, Process Molder.

Process portal: Enables process participants to perform assigned tasks, view the history of tasks, launch any processes or services that are attached to tasks and view the performance of their processes and teams. Tools available from the process portal include Scoreboards.

29.How do you generate a unique ID for a Coach View at runtime?

Ans:

In some situations, you might want to use the ID attribute for your DOM elements within a coach view. However, all DOM IDs must be globally unique. For example, during collaboration, the default highlighting behavior is implemented based on a unique DOM ID. To ensure a unique ID, you can use the $$viewDOMID$$ placeholder keyword. At runtime, this keyword will be replaced by the Coach View DOM ID.

30.What is BPC and how can it be useful?

Ans:

BPC is a Business Process Choreography. It is used for monitoring Process Instance, Process Template and human task Instance, Human task Template.

31.What are different types of Human Tasks?

Ans:

The different types of Human Tasks are:

• To-do task – a service schedules a piece of work for a person to perform.
• Invocation task – a person uses a service.
• Collaboration task – one person assigns work to another person.
• Administration task – a person is granted administrative powers over an activity or process.

32.What is the difference between process app and toolkit?

Ans:

Process App is deployable but toolkit is not deployable and it should be integrated.

33.In production one instance has failed due to some business object having bad data or null values. How will you inject data on runtime in production?

Ans:

IBPM provides some rest API which operation name is setData through which we can inject values.

34.How do you fire a boundary event programmatically?

Ans:

35.What is Durable Subscription?

Ans:

When a message is sent to a user who is offline, the message waits in the queue and gets delivered when the user appears online again. This phenomenon is called “Durable Subscription”.

36. What is a Business State Machine?

Ans:

Business state machines are service components that allow you to represent business processes based on states and events instead of a sequential business process model.

Business state machines specify the sequences of states, responses, and actions that an object or an interaction goes through in response to events.

37. What is CGI and how it will be used?

Ans:

CEI enhances compact event-management services, like consolidating raw events via multiple, heterogeneous sources and distributing them to event consumers. It enables functionality for generation, propagation, persistence, and consumption of events representing service component processes.

38. How do I provide security parameters for applications that use adapters?

Ans:

An adapter is the mechanism used by an application to communicate with an Enterprise Information System (EIS). The information exchanged between an application and an EIS can be highly sensitive and therefore important to ensure the security of this information transaction.

39. What is a Coach View?

Ans:

Coach view provides the user interface elements and layout for the Coach.

Each Coach View can contain one or more other Coach Views, which creates a parent-child relationship between these Coach Views.

At run time, the parent Coach View is rendered as a “<div></div>” tag that contains a nested

Each Coach View can also have a binding to a business object, CSS code to control its visual layout and JavaScript to define its behavior.

40. What are the different types of UCA’s?

Ans:

• Message event and Timer event.
• Message event is used to receive or send messages.
• Timer event is mostly used as a process scheduler.

41. How do you analyze the time elapsed between the activities in the process?

Ans:

If you want to analyze the amount of time that elapses between certain steps in your process, you can add tracking points to your BPD and then create a timing interval to capture the duration between defined start and end points. When you create a timing interval, you can create custom reports that enable you to calculate the duration of a process, or compare the duration of several processes.

Do the following tasks before creating a timing interval:

• Enable auto-tracking
• Add tracking points to the business process definition
• Create a tracking group to hold the timing interval data (make sure to add each tracking point to the tracking group you created)

42. How can I migrate from earlier products and versions to IBM Business Process Manager?

Ans:

You can migrate from various earlier server products such as WebSphere Process Server and WebSphere MQ Workflow, and from development environments and earlier authoring tools such as WebSphere Integration Developer. 

43. Can I configure key performance indicators and create service level agreements by using IBM Business Process Manager?

Ans:

The data that IBM Business Process Manager tracks and stores for key performance indicators (KPIs) enable you to analyze process performance as well as create service level agreements (SLAs).

44. Can I simulate the process I created by using IBM Business Process Manager while the process is being created?

Ans:

Yes.

45. How do I provide security parameters for applications created by using IBM Business Process Manager?

Ans:

Applications that run in IBM Business Process Manager are secured through a number of elements such as authentication, access control, data integrity, privacy, and identity propagation.

46. What is a Start message Event Listener?

Ans:

• When the UCA reaches its end point. It will cause a new Business process to start.
• The output of the UCA should be used to set the starting values of variables within the business process.
• There is no concept of correlation in start message events because it is creating a new BPD instance and such there is no data to compare it to.

47. What are the different types of Intermediate Event Listeners?

Ans:

• Message.
• Content.
• Timer.
• Tracking.

48. What are tracks? 

Ans:

Process Center tracks the changes in the process applications using Snapshots.

Snapshots:

• Record the state of the items within a process application or track at a specific point in time.
• From the Process Center console, you can create snapshots of your process applications.
• You can also deploy particular snapshots of your process applications on the Process Servers in staging, test, and production environments.

Tracks:

• Optional subdivisions in a process application based on team tasks or process application versions.
• You can determine if additional tracks are necessary for each process application and, if so, enable them at any time
• Typically Tracks will be created from production snapshots for maintenance purposes.
• Tracks or snapshots cannot be merged at a later point of time. So, It will be challenging for parallel development.

49. Explain about Gateways?

Ans:

Gateways control the divergence and convergence of a sequence flow, determining branching and merging of the paths that a runtime process can take.

You can model the following types of gateways in your process diagram:

1. Parallel (AND): Use a parallel, diverging gateway when you want the process to follow all available paths.

Use a parallel, converging gateway when you want to converge all available paths.

2. Inclusive (OR): Use inclusive, diverging gateway when you want to follow one or more available paths based on conditions that you specify.

Use downstream of an inclusive diverging gateway to converge multiple paths into a single path after all the active paths completed their runtime execution. The inclusive join looks upstream at each path to determine whether the path is active, in which case it waits. Otherwise, it passes the token through without waiting.

Note: Inclusive gateways can follow a maximum of n–1 paths. So, if you model a conditional split with three paths, the process can follow two of those paths.

3. Exclusive (XOR): Use to model a point in the process execution where only one of several paths can be followed, depending on a condition, or to model a point in process execution when the token for one of several incoming paths is passed through the gateway.

Event: Use to model a point in the process execution where only one of several paths can be followed, depending on events that occur. A specific event, such as the receipt of a message or timer event, determines the path to be taken. An event gateway must be modeled a certain way as described in Modeling event gateways.

4. Event Gateway: This gateway contains a timer and an UCA. We need to set time for the timer and attach a UCA. Whichever is completed first, we will move a head of the flow specified and kill the other token on the gateway.

50. How do you enable UCA to start a BPD?

Ans:

If you want to run the startBpdWithName application programming interface (API) to start a BPD instance inside an undercover agent, set the property to true in the 100Custom.xml file or another override file. Restart the product, and check the TeamworksConfiguration.running.xml file to ensure that the setting has the appropriate value. The property is set to false by default, and if you don’t change it, you might have errors that prevent the BPD from starting.

51. What is a linked process?

Ans:

A call to another reusable process.The process called by the linked process activity can contain multiple start events, but must contain at least one start event with an implementation type of None.Variable data is local to each process, therefore data mapping is required to pass data into and out of the linked process.

52.  What is an Event Sub-process?

Ans:

A specialized type of non-reusable sub-process that is not part of the normal sequence flow of its parent process, and which might occur zero or many times during the execution of the parent process.

Must contain a single start event, which can be one of:

• Timer
• Message
• Error

Event sub-process execution can interrupt parent processes or can run in parallel.

Activity names must be unique with respect to the top-level process activities, and all other subprocesses and event subprocesses under the same top-level process.

Boundary events are not supported on an event sub-process.

Variable Scope:

Inherits variables from the parent process and can contain local private variables visible only within the subprocess.

Variable names declared in an event sub-process cannot be the same as variable names declared in any of its parent processes. If there are multiple layers of embedding, with event sub-processes contained within another sub-processes, variable names must be unique throughout the entire sub-process hierarchy.

53. Explain about Web Services?

Ans:

Web services are two types. Inbound and Outbound web services.

• Inbound web services are used if an external system wants to call into IBPM.
• Outbound web services are used if IBPM wants to use an external system/Application.

In two ways it can be configurable

• Provide Inline Configuration.
• From Process App Settings.

54. What are the IT infrastructure administration tasks that I can perform in IBM Business Process Manager?

Ans:

You prepare, monitor, and modify the runtime environment into which applications, their modules, and resources are deployed. For more information, see the topic for your release.

55. How can I customize the IBM Process Portal, Business Process Choreographer Explorer, or Business Process Archive Explorer Update themes?

Ans:

You can customize IBM Process Portal by setting the language for the interface, changing the look of the interface, or even restricting access to Process Portal functions. You can also customize the interface of a specific Business Process Choreographer Explorer or Business Process Archive Explorer instance according to your business requirements. For more information, see the topic for your release.

56. How do I secure access to timetables in the Business Calendars widget?

Ans:

The Security Roles widget provides you with the ability to secure access to individual timetables in the Business Calendars widget. For more information, see the topic for your release.

57. How can I set up a clustered Process Server including Business Space and HTTP Server in a production environment on Red Hat Enterprise Linux by using Oracle 11g?

Ans:

To set up a clustered Process Server including Business Space and HTTP Server in a production environment on Red Hat Enterprise Linux by using Oracle 11g, complete the steps in Configuring a Clustered Process Server. This document provides an overview about the installation and configuration tasks required for setting up a production runtime environment of a Business Process Management solution. The main focus is on IBM Business Process Manager and, in particular, Process Server by using Oracle for persisting data.

58. How can I develop client applications by using REST APIs?

Ans:

IBM Business Process Manager V7.5 provides a set of APIs that are implemented by using Representational State Transfer (REST) services. A set of REST resources is available for accessing IBM Business Process Manager artifacts, including business processes, and tasks. See the topic for your release.

59. How do I create and send alerts with IBM Business Process Manager V7.5?

Ans:

Creating and sending alerts with IBM Business Process Manager V7.5 shows you how to use IBM Business Process Manager V7.5.0.1 to develop and send alerts to business dashboards by using alert handlers (an Service Component Architecture (SCA) service handler and a web service handler program), an end-to-end business process workflow (a BPEL application), and a monitoring (a monitor measures application) sample.

60. What are different task types?

Ans:

•  User Task
• System Task
• Decision Task

61. Define User Task.

Ans:

• User tasks must be completed by process participants and are associated with Human services by default.
• For cases where you want a user to start the service but no additional user involvement is required, you can also choose a user task type and associate a service with it, such as an Integration or Advanced Integration service.
• Process Designer automatically creates the required user implementation that you need when you drag process components onto a diagram. You can also choose the User Task and associated service for activity implementation, as described in Implementing activities.

62. Define System Task.

Ans:

System tasks must be completed by an automated system or service and are automatically run without a need for user initiation regardless of the type of lane in which they are defined in a BPD diagram.

When you drag an Ajax service, General System service, Integration service, or Advanced Integration service from the library to a BPD diagram, Process Designer automatically creates an activity with a System task type, regardless of whether the service is dragged to a system lane or to a participant lane.

Dragging an activity from the palette to a system lane in a BPD diagram automatically creates an activity with a System task with the Default System service selected. System tasks that you place in a non-system lane are also run by the system.

63. Define Decision Task.

Ans:

• Decision tasks are useful when you want a decision or condition in a business rule to determine which process implementation is started.
• When you drag a Decision service from the library to a BPD diagram, Process Designer automatically creates an activity with a Decision task

64. If I want to change business object type values, what will you do?

Ans:

For that we have to make changes in bpd and create snapshots and redeploy them.

65. What are the different ways you can start a BPD?

Ans:

FOUR

• From Process Portal.
• From Web Service.
• UCA( JMS ).
• Java API (startProcessByName).

66. What do you understand by Activities in BPM terms?

Ans:

An activity is any work that is being performed in a process. An Activity is represented by a rounded-corner rectangle in a Business Process Model. There are two types of activities: tasks and sub-processes.

67.What do you understand by Annotations?

Ans:

Annotations can be used to add textual comments within a process diagram.

68. What do you understand by Artifacts?

Ans:

Artifacts allow process designers to extend the basic BPMN notation to include additional information about the process in the process diagram. There are three types of artifacts: data object, group, and annotation

69. What do you understand about the Association?

Ans:

An Association is used to show relationships between data, text and other Artifacts and flow objects in a process. An Association is represented by a dotted line with a lined arrowhead in a Business Process Model.

70. What do you understand by Business Process Diagram (BPD)?

Ans:

A Business Process Diagram is a simple diagram made up of a set of graphical elements that depicts a business process. There are four primary elements of BPD: flow objects, connecting objects, swimlanes, and artifacts.

71. What do you understand about the Business Process Model?

Ans:

BPMN defines a Business Process Model as a network of graphical objects, which are activities, and the flow controls that define their order of performance.

72. What do you understand by Business Process Modeling Notation?

Ans:

Business Process Modeling Notation was developed by the Business Process Management Institute to provide a process modeling notation that is understood by all process modelers, users, analysts, etc.

73. What do you understand by Connecting Objects?

Ans:

Flow Objects are connected together using Connecting Objects. There are three types of Connecting Objects: Sequence Flow, Message Flow, and Association.

74. What do you understand by Data Object?

Ans:

Data Objects are used to show how data is required or produced by activities in a process. Data Objects are represented by a picture of a piece of paper folded at the corner in a Business Process Model.

75. What do you understand by Events?

Ans:

Events are anything that “happens” during the course of a business process. Events can have a cause, referred to as a Trigger, and/or an impact, referred to as a Result. Events are based on where they occur in the flow process (start, middle, or end).

76. What’s the difference between CRM and BPM systems?

Ans:

CRM is an abbreviation for customer relationship management and is a phrase used to describe all aspects of interaction that a company has with its customer, whether it is sales or service-related. It’s a business strategy that helps your business to better understand your customer, retain customers, provide excellent customer service, win new clients and increase profitably.

77. What is ERP?

Ans:

ERP is an abbreviation for enterprise resource planning

ERP software is used to manage the business. It integrates all facets of an operation, including product planning, development, manufacturing processes, human resources, financials and sales and marketing.

78. Debrief on Reports?

Ans:

• We need to report the data in different formats Ex: Bar graph, Pie graph, etc…
• Reports were displayed using Scoreboards.
• Ad-hoc Reports: To create reports at any time.

79. Explain About SLA?

Ans:

• SLA full form is Service Level Agreement. It mainly used to do work timely manner fashion
• Simply SLA is an Agreement Between Two |People

80. What is the gateway? or How do you converge or diverge the process flows? 

Ans:

Gateways control the divergence and convergence of a sequence flow, determining branching and merging of the paths that a runtime process can take.

81. What are different gateways available and when do you use each?

Ans:

You can model the following types of gateways in your process diagram:

Parallel (AND): Use a parallel, diverging gateway when you want the process to follow all available paths.

Use a parallel, converging gateway when you want to converge all available paths.

Inclusive (OR): Use inclusive, diverging gateway when you want to follow one or more available paths based on conditions that you specify.

Use downstream of an inclusive diverging gateway to converge multiple paths into a single path after all the active paths completed their runtime execution. The inclusive join looks upstream at each path to determine whether the path is active, in which case it waits. Otherwise, it passes the token through without waiting.

Note: Inclusive gateways can follow a maximum of n–1 path. So, if you model a conditional split with three paths, the process can follow two of those paths

Exclusive (XOR): Use to model a point in the process execution where only one of several paths can be followed, depending on a condition, or to model a point in process execution when the token for one of several incoming paths is passed through the gateway.

Event: Use to model a point in the process execution where only one of several paths can be followed, depending on events that occur. A specific event, such as the receipt of a message or timer event, determines the path to be taken. An event gateway must be modelled a certain way as described in Modeling event gateways.

Be aware of the following when using gateways:

• After you drag a gateway from the palette to your process diagram, you can choose any of the available gateway types.
• When you model inclusive and exclusive gateways, if all conditions evaluate to false, the process follows the default sequence flow. The default sequence flow is the first sequence flow that you create from the gateway to the following activity, but you can change the default sequence flow at any time.