[jboss-dev-forums] [Design of JBoss jBPM] - Web Console: Context Menus and Navigation

[david.lloyd@jboss.com]

Tom noted to me that the context menus are confusing and annoying (I'm heavily paraphrasing here), and I happen to agree.

His suggestion is to use the largely empty top area for navigation.  I think that's a good idea, but I also think there needs to be a way to deal with the "two-dimensional" aspect of the jpdl domain model.

What I mean is this: you can be working in the context of a process definition, a process instance, a task definition, and a task instance; in addition it may make sense to make a context based on the current token.

Now bear with me here, it gets a bit confusing.  Having a process instance implies a process definition.  Having a task definition implies a process definition as well.  Having a task instance implies both a process instance and a task definition.  So, given the context of a task instance, one could navigate "up" to the task instance, or "up" to the process instance.  And both make sense; if someone wants to examine the task definition for their task, they should be able to.  And if someone wants to look at the process instance, maybe to see what all the tasks are on the process, that's a logical navigation direction as well.

So what I propose is to have two rows of navigation that could look something like this (please forgive this dumb ugly mockup):


  |    Process "websale" version 1 ID 7              Process Instance ID 45
  | 
  | 
  |            Task "Collect Money" ID 12                     Task Instance ID 56
  | 

I can make it look a lot nicer than that though... I hope. :-)

Opine at will.

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