# The BPEL Designer

This section discusses the features of the BPEL Designer.

BPEL Designer

1. Drawing Canvas : This contains the graphical representation of the BPEL process and is displayed when the Design tab at the bottom of the editor window is selected. The primary mouse click action (default is left mouse button) on any of the activity names activates an in-line editor, allowing you to edit the process name. To finish editing, simply press the ENTER key or change focus by clicking on a different window control.

   The Source tab displays the XML (text) representation of the process. Any changes made in one view are immediately reflected in the other. The default layout of activities is top-to-bottom, but can be changed to horizontal layout from the context menu.

2. Palette : The primary editing, creation and viewing tools of the BPEL Designer are accessed from the tool Palette.
3. Dashboard : Provides an overview of the BPEL process.
4. Property Sheet : When an activity is selected in the drawing canvas, its properties are displayed in the tabbed Properties sheet.
5. Outline : This panel provides a structural view of the BPEL process.

The BPEL Designer will validate your business process every time it is saved. If an activity is found to be incomplete or incorrectly configured, it will be decorated with an error icon (red circle with an X) as for example the Assign activity below:

Assign error

Hovering your mouse over this icon will display an error message in a tooltip:

Assign error with tooltip

The remainder of this section discusses some basic BPEL concepts and how they relate to the BPEL Designer.