There is a lot of mileage in naming K2 blackpearl artefacts appropriately and correctly. One benefit is the ease of understanding what the role is of a K2 blackpearl process by looking at its underlying K2 blackpearl activities and K2 blackpearl events.
There seems to be several ways that are used by K2 blackpearl developers to name K2 blackpearl processes, activities and events. A few I’ve encountered since I stated in 2000 working with K2 blackpearl in ascending order of good practice are:
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1. None – Rely on the K2 blackpearl designer to name the K2 Processes, K2 Activities and K2 Events. An example of the names are Process1kprx, DefaultActivity1, DefaultEvent1
No naming convention for K2 blackpearl artefacts
2. Random – Depending on the developer and sometimes it feels like the day of the week, any random name will do. This could be that an K2 blackpearl activity calls a K2 SmartObject and the name will simply assigned to denote this. Examples are Server Updates for a K2 blackpearl activity and Call User SmartObject for a K2 blackpearl event
Random naming convention for K2 blackpearl artefacts
3. Role based – A structured way that groups relevant K2 blackpearl artefacts together as much as possible and allows role based naming convention i.e. what role the group of artefacts play in the underlying K2 blackpearl process and how they achieve their goal.
Role based naming convention for K2 blackpearl artefacts
After years of developing K2 blackpearl solutions, the role base naming convention emerged as a trusted way to naming K2 blackpearl process artefacts and ensures standardisation across K2 blackpearl solutions and promotes ease of understanding the goals of the K2 blackpearl solution.
The basic idea behind role based naming for a K2 blackpearl process starts by naming the K2 blackpearl process based on it’s role or function it plays in the overall K2 blackpearl Workflow solution. For example, if it is a Workflow process that governs idea management, the data subject (or data record) of the K2 Workflow will be an Idea and good name will be IdeaManagementProcess.kprx. The Process part of the K2 blackpearl process denotes it’s the main starting point for the Workflow and subsequent processes that branch off the main process are named according to the role they play in the overall K2 blackpearl Workflow. An example will be SuspendIdea.kprx for a process that suspends the main Process.
Naming of K2 blackpearl processes based on their roles
Role based naming for K2 blackpearl activities and events also starts by ensuring K2 blackpearl activities and K2 blackpearl events are grouped by roles. Asked yourself what the K2 blackpearl activity is (i.e. Ideal Approval) and how it achieves it’s goal in the K2 blackpearl process (i.e. the steps in order to get Ideal Approval completed successfully).
In the first K2 blackpearl activity in the example below the what are the creation of an idea record hence it’s named Idea Record Creation and the how comprises of two steps namely creating the record and to generate a case reference hence the names Create Idea Record and Generate Case Reference respectively.
Role based naming convention for K2 blackpearl artefacts
Always invest time in thinking what K2 blackpearl artefacts should be called when implementing K2 blackpearl solutions. Think about the roles each of the artefacts plays in the overall solution and ask yourself the what and how question when naming K2 activities and K2 events.