The BAM wizard was introduced with LiveCycle ES2. By default BAM monitors only the metrics of the processes running on a LiveCycle server not the actual data generated by business transactions. Before this fancy wizard, if you wanted to monitor the data (variables etc.) circulating in your processes with BAM as well, you had to go through a time-consuming procedure to create the required data objects in the BAM workbench and dashboard. With the new BAM wizard, the process of monitoring business data gets much easier and less painful. Basically, it allows you to create a service in your process diagram to monitor your process data metrics. With this easy to use wizard, you don’t have to be a Cognos BI expert in order to create dashboards that show how your business is doing at a particular point in time. This LC component stores the business data in LiveCycle’s own database, so you don’t need to install and use another database for just monitoring business data metrics. BTW if you want to use BAM to collect data from a database other than the one that is used by LiveCycle ES for its operations then you will need a special license called “BAM ES Extended”. Standard license does not cover external database connections outside the LiveCycle environment.

The BAM Wizard helps you monitor your data by creating a separate table in your LiveCycle’s database for each process that has the component. The wizard consists of 5 sections, 4 of which require you to input some data in order to create the table and appropriate fields in the database.

Adobe BAM Wizard

Connection:  Needs to be filled once (the first time the wizard is used). On this page you set the data source, BAM Server URL, BAM Server Username, and the BAM Server Password.

Data: This is the page on which you specify what needs to be monitored by the BAM wizard through XPath expressions. You can also delete or modify previously added XPath expressions here in this section.

Type: This is the section where you need to define the data types of those process variables you added in the previous section.

Views: In this page you can add functions such as SUM, Average etc. (depending on the data types you have)

Parameters: This is the section in which the wizard shows you the XML string that tells what will be sent to the BAM server by the component in order to interact with the data.

You won’t get to use this component unless you install SP1 or SP2. Even then, LC Workbench requires you to install the component manually. After installing one of the service packs, you will see a folder named “LavaActivitySuite” under the “Adobe LiveCycle ES2\LiveCycle_ES_SDK\misc\” folder.  In that folder, you’ll find a document that contains instructions on how to install the BAM Wizard.

In conclusion, the BAM wizard is worth a look if you are looking for a fast and easy way to create dashboards which present business data in an easy-to-read format.