In this exercise, you will create a BAM activity using ODBA. This exercise assumes that you designed the business process described in Exercise 5-3.

1. If the Data of Interest shape is not visible (see Figure 5-8), from Visio’s ODBA menu, select Show/Hide Business Data of Interest.
2. Right-click the Data of Interest shape, and select Edit Business Data Items. This will bring up the Business Data of Interest dialog box, as shown in Figure 5-9.
3. Click the Add button to bring up the Business Data Item Properties dialog box.
   

   Figure 5-8. ODBA showing the Data of Interest shape

   

   Figure 5-9. The Business Data of Interest dialog box

4. Enter OrderNumber in the Item Name text box, select Business Data – Text as the type, enter a maximum length of 20, and enter a suitable description (see Figure 5-10).
   

   Figure 5-10. The Business Data Item Properties dialog box

5. Click OK to close the Business Data Item Properties dialog box.
6. Enter four more data items as listed in Table 5-2.

   

7. If you wish, you can rearrange the order of the business data using the Up and Down buttons, as shown in Figure 5-11.
8. Click OK to close the Business Data of Interest dialog box.
9. Right-click the arrow between the Begin shape and the Rcv Message shape. Select Add Milestone to bring up the Milestone Properties dialog box. Enter StartProcess as the name of the milestone (see Figure 5-12).
   

   Figure 5-11. The business data of interest for the ODBA activity

   

   Figure 5-12. The Milestone Properties dialog box

10. Right-click the arrow from the Rcv Message shape to the Send Message shape, and create a milestone called SendMessage.
11. Right-click the arrow from the Send Message shape to the End shape, and create a milestone called EndProcess. Your activity should now resemble the one in Figure 5-13.
    

    Figure 5-13. The completed activity in ODBA

12. From the ODBA menu, select Set BAM Web Page Preferences to bring up the BAM Web Page Preferences dialog box.
13. Enter the name BaleOrders in the Activity name field, as shown in Figure 5-14, and http://localhost/bam in the Web page URI field. Click OK. This sets the name of the activity.
    

    Figure 5-14. The BAM Web Page Preferences dialog box

14. From the ODBA menu, select Export BAM Definition File. Click the Browse button, use your shortcut within My Documents to navigate to the Visual Studio directory where your BAM solution is stored, and select the BAMDefinitionFiles folder. Save the file.
15. From the File menu, select Save, and then save the Visio diagram in your ODBAProcessDesigns folder.

In this exercise, you will create the view that is used by AWO’s manufacturing scheduler. This is a simple view that just displays an overview of individual orders.

1. Reopen the Excel spreadsheet created in Exercise 5-2.
2. From the BAM menu, select BAM View, and the BAM View Creation Wizard appears. Click Next to get to the next page.
3. Ensure Create a New View is selected, and then click Next.
4. Name the view Manufacturing. Select the Orders check box to ensure that data from the Orders activity is included in the view (see Figure 5-16). Click Next.
   

   Figure 5-16. The New BAM View: Name and Activities page of the BAM View Creation Wizard

5. The next page of the wizard allows you to select the items that you would like to see in this view. The manufacturing scheduler isn’t interested in the customer data, but just wants to see the level of effort required to produce each order. Select the following items:
   • BaleCount
   • EngControlNumber
   • EngineeringApproved
   • ManufacturingReceived
   • MaterialsPromised
   • MaterialVolume
   • OrderNumber
   • OrderReceived
   • ToolOperations
6. Click Next to display the View Items page.
7. Click New Alias and select EngControlNumber from the drop-down box. Enter ControlNumber as an alias (see Figure 5-17).
   

   Figure 5-17. Creating an alias

8. Click New Alias and select EngineeringApproved from the drop-down box. Specify an alias of Approved for the field.
9. Click New Alias and select OrderReceived from the drop-down box. Specify an alias of OrderDate for the field.
10. Click EngControlNumber, and then click the Delete button. Click Yes to indicate you are sure you want to delete this alias.
11. Click EngineeringApproved, and then click the Delete button. Click Yes to indicate you are sure you want to delete this alias.
12. Click OrderReceived, and then click the Delete button. Click Yes to indicate you are sure you want to delete this alias.

    These last few steps have renamed EngControlNumber, EngineeringApproved, and OrderReceived to new, friendlier names, as you can see in Figure 5-18.

    

    Figure 5-18. The Edit BAM View: View Items page of the BAM View Creation Wizard

13. Click Next until you reach the last page of the wizard, and then click Finish. You have now created a simple view.
14. Save the new version of the spreadsheet that includes the view in your ExcelWorkbooks folder with a unique name signifying its contents.

The Manufacturing view is fairly simple. It displays a subset of the fields from individual items and renames a couple of items. The Marketing team doesn’t want to see individual items; they are much more interested in seeing aggregate data so they can tell how agents are performing in each state. In this exercise, you will build an aggregated view to support these queries.

1. Just as you did in the previous exercise, reopen the Excel spreadsheet if it’s closed.
2. From the BAM menu, select BAM View, and the BAM View Creation Wizard appears. Click Next to get to the next page.
3. Ensure Create a New View is selected, and then click Next.
4. Name the view Marketing. Select the Orders check box to ensure that data from the Orders activity is included in the view. Click Next.
5. Select the following items:
   • AgentNumber
   • BaleCount
   • CustomerCountry
   • CustomerState
   • OrderReceived
   • Price
6. Click Next twice, until you reach the Aggregation Dimensions and Measures page.
7. Click New Dimension.
8. Enter Customer as the dimension name, select the dimension type of Data Dimension, and add Customer-Country and CustomerState to the dimension (see Figure 5-19).
   

   Figure 5-19. Creating a data dimension in the New Dimension dialog box

   Note The order that items are added to a dimension is important. You should add CustomerCountry first, because CustomerCountry is the top-level item.

9. Click OK to return to the Aggregation Dimensions and Measures page.
10. Click New Dimension again, and enter OrderSize as the dimension name, select Numeric Range Dimension as the dimension type, and specify Price as the base data item. This dimension will be used to divide orders into small, medium, and large.
11. Click New Range to create a new range. Enter a range name of Small, and specify the From value as 0 and the To value as 1,000. This specifies that orders from $0 to $1,000 are small orders.
12. Click New Range to create a new range. Enter a range name of Medium, and specify the From value as 1,000 and the To value as 10,000. This specifies that orders from $1,000 to $10,000 are medium orders.
13. Click New Range to create a new range. Enter a range name of Large, and specify the From value as 10,000, and the To value as 1,000,000. This specifies that orders from $10,000 to $1,000,000 are large orders. Your New Dimension dialog should appear as shown in Figure 5-20.
    

    Figure 5-20. Creating a range dimension in the New Dimension dialog box

14. Click OK to return to the Aggregation Dimensions and Measures page.
15. Click New Dimension again, and enter Agent as the dimension name, select the dimension type of Data Dimension, and add AgentNumber to the dimension.
16. Click OK to return to the Aggregation Dimensions and Measures page.
17. Click New Dimension again, and enter OrderDate as the dimension name, select the dimension type of Time Dimension, use OrderReceived as the base business milestone, and select Year, Quarter, Month, Day, Hour, Minute as the display option. (In a real system, this would probably be too much detail, but in an exercise there’s a good chance that all our data will be gathered on the same day, so we need to see the minutes.)
18. Click OK to return to the Aggregation Dimensions and Measures page.
19. Click New Measure, and enter NumberOfBales as the measure name, and select BaleCount as the base data item and Sum as the aggregation type (see Figure 5-21). This measure will be used to display the total number of bales that have been ordered.
    

    Figure 5-21. Creating a measure in the New Measure dialog box

20. Click New Measure, enter TotalPrice as the measure name, and select Price as the base data item and Sum as the aggregation type. This measure will be used to display the total price of the orders.
21. Click New Measure, and enter OrderCount as the measure name. Select Count as the aggregation type, and the base activity will automatically default to Orders. This measure will be used to display the order count, based on the number of activity items in the activity.
22. Click Next until the last page of the wizard, and then click Finish.
23. Because you have created an aggregated view, the View Creation Wizard allows you to create a pivot table that will be the default display for the view. In the Pivot Table field list near the right of the screen, you can select the fields you would like to display. Choose TotalPrice, Agent, and Customer, to create a pivot table that shows total value of orders by geography and agent. You will see a pivot where the data area contains the total number of orders, sorted by agent and customer country.
24. Drag the customer country heading to the top of the pivot, and create a matrix, where each country is a column and each agent is a row. You will see numbers in the data area—these numbers aren’t real data, they only exist to show that numbers will be displayed in that area when the pivot is live.
25. Save the new version of the spreadsheet that includes the view within your ExcelWorkbooks folder with a unique name signifying its contents. When you deploy the view to BAM, the new pivot table will be displayed on the BAM portal page, as shown in Figure 5-22.
    

    Figure 5-22. The pivot table created from the Marketing view

The COO is especially interested in understanding the overall performance of the order process, so the COO’s view will include a progress dimension. Progress dimensions divide a business process into stages separated by milestones. In addition, durations will be used to measure the average time that an order spends at each stage in the process.

1. Just as you did in the previous exercise, reopen the Excel spreadsheet if it’s closed.
2. From the BAM menu, select BAM View, and the BAM View Creation Wizard appears. Click Next to get to the next page.
3. Ensure Create a New View is selected, and then click Next.
4. Name the view OrderStatus. Select the Orders check box to ensure that data from the Orders activity is included in the view. Click Next.
5. Select the following items:
   • AccountingResponse
   • EngineeringResponse
   • ManufacturingReceived
   • OrderReceived
   • Price
   • PurchasingResponse
6. Click Next to bring up the View Items page.
7. Click New Duration. Create a duration called EngineeringReview that starts with the OrderReceived milestone and ends with the EngineeringResponse milestone. Set the time resolution to minute.
8. Create two more durations as shown in Table 5-4.

   

9. Click Next to display the Aggregation Dimensions and Measures page.
10. Click New Dimension.
11. Name the dimension OrderProgress. Select the dimension type of Progress Dimension.
12. Click the New Milestone button. Name the progress milestone NewOrder, and select OrderReceived as the business milestone (see Figure 5-23).
    

    Figure 5-23. Creating a progress milestone in the New Progress Milestone dialog box

13. Click the New Stage button. Name the stage OrderApproval.
14. Click the New Milestone button. Name the progress milestone Approved, and select EngineeringResponse as the business milestone.
15. Click the New Stage button. Name the stage Purchasing.
16. Click the New Milestone button. Name the progress milestone PurchasingComplete, and select PurchasingResponse as the business milestone.
17. Click the New Stage button. Name the stage Design.
18. Click the New Milestone button. Name the progress milestone ManufacturingStart, and select ManufacturingReceived as the business milestone. Your New Dimension dialog box should now appear as it does in Figure 5-24.
    

    Figure 5-24. The progress dimension

    This dimension divides order processing into three stages. The OrderApproval stage begins when a new order is received, and ends when a response is received from Engineering. The Purchasing stage begins when a response is received from Engineering, and ends when a response is received from Purchasing. The Design stage begins when a response is received from Purchasing, and ends when manufacturing instructions are transmitted to Manufacturing.

19. Click New Dimension again, and enter OrderDate as the dimension name, select the dimension type of Time Dimension, use OrderReceived as the base business milestone, and select Year, Quarter, Month, Day, Hour, Minute as the display option.
20. Click New Measure, and enter TotalPrice as the measure name, and select Price as the base data item and Sum as the aggregation type. This measure will be used to display the total price of the orders.
21. Click New Measure, and enter OrderCount as the measure name. Select Count as the aggregation type, and the base activity will automatically default to Orders. This measure will be used to display the order count, based on the number of activity items in the activity.
22. Click New Measure, and enter AvgReviewTime as the measure name, select Average as the aggregation type, and then select EngineeringReview as the base data item. This measure provides an average time for the engineering review process.
23. Click New Measure, and enter AvgPurchasingTime as the measure name, select Average as the aggregation type, and then select Purchasing as the base data item.
24. Click New Measure, and enter AvgDesignTime as the measure name, select Average as the aggregation type, and then select EngineeringDesign as the base data item.

    The last three steps have created average durations for each of the process steps on the critical path. This allows performance of each department over time to be tracked. The Edit BAM View: Aggregate Dimensions and Measures page should now appear as it does in Figure 5-25.

    

    Figure 5-25. The OrderProgress view

25. Click Next until the last page of the wizard, and then click Finish.
26. In the pivot table, select OrderCount, TotalPrice, and Progress.
27. Click the Real-Time Aggregation button (see Figure 5-26). In Excel 2003, this button is on the BAM menu. In Excel 2007, it is in the Toolbar Commands area on the Add-Ins tab. Clicking this button ensures that status is updated on this view in real time.
    

    Figure 5-26. Setting real-time aggregation

28. Save the new version of the spreadsheet that includes the view to your ExcelWorkbooks folder with a unique name that signifies its contents. When you deploy the view to BAM, the new pivot table will be displayed on the BAM portal page.

In this exercise, you will learn to use the bm.exe tool to administer BAM activities.

1. Open the last version of your spreadsheet. Using the BAM Add-In for Excel, from the BAM menu command, export the contents to XML. Save the file in your BAMDefinitions folder with a unique name. Our example assumes you have saved the file as the name awo.xml.
2. From the Start menu, right-click Command Prompt, and then select Run As Administrator. This will start a command shell with administrator privilege.
3. Change the directory to your BAMDefinitions folder.

   Note You must be a local administrator to run the bm.exe command. These instructions assume that you have a single server installation and you used the default database names. If that is not the way your system is set up, you may need to add the –Server and –Database parameters to each of the following commands.

4. Enter the following commands:
   path %path%;C:Program FilesMicrosoft BizTalk Server 2009Tracking
bm deploy-all –definitionFile:awo.xml
bm add-account -AccountName:<your account name> -View:Manufacturing
bm add-account -AccountName:<your account name> -View:Marketing
bm add-account -AccountName:<your account name> -View:OrderProgress

   Replace <your account name> with the name of your Windows user account in DOMAINUSERNAME format. As an example, if you are logged on to a domain called AWOMANUF as user FREDDY, you would enter the following as the first add-account command:

   bm add-account -AccountName:AWOMANUFFREDDY -View:Manufacturing

   These commands will deploy the activities and views, and then will give your account permission to see the views.

5. Enter the following commands:
   bm get-activities
bm get-views

   These commands will list the activities and views that were deployed.

6. Enter the following command:
   bm get-accounts -View:Marketing

   This command will list the users who can query the Marketing view.