[jbpm-dev] document based workflows

[Pau Carré Cardona]

Hello,
To make this nodes it is just necessary to add some custom
variables:the template and the list of variables of the template. This
can be easily done by inheriting the usual task node. I do not think
it is needed something very customized.
>From my point of view, the only part needed to do the integration is a
good rich text editor that could be added as a plugin in Alfresco
(which already uses jBPM 3) or other document manager.
In fact, the idea can be seen as an Alfresco jBPM 4/5 integration with
a web based rich text editor and a template processor like FreeMarker.

Pau


2010/4/27 Kris Verlaenen <kverlaen at redhat.com>:
> Interesting use case.  I do agree that some basic support for more document
> management like this could definitely be useful to a lot of people.  These
> two features you are mentioning, do you see them as additional node types
> that you can use in your process if you want to?  Or would this require
> deeper integration?  I think this is a good example of what is called
> "domain-specific processes" in the request for comments (under usability),
> where the application domain happens to be document management.
>
> Ideally, I believe most of the features related to document management
> should be achieved by providing the necessary integration with a document
> management system of some kind, not trying to build similar functionality
> closely tied to the process engine itself (like templates, document
> management, etc.).
>
> Kris
>
>
>> Hello,
>> I have seen the architecture model of jBPM 5 and it seems very complete.
>> Anyway, I don't understand why you do not finish the jBPM 4 designer before
>> developing the jBPM 5 version.
>> The request I have is based on the introduction of information in the BPM
>> system. Forms are a good way to map BPM variables, specially if those forms
>> have validation and  are dynamic. This forms are specially well suited when
>> interacting with external individuals (such as citizens in a government
>> administration).
>> But forms are not suited for internal workflow in document based BPM. Lets
>> say that, for internal work, a user should send a document and wants the
>> information of this document be processed by the BPM engine for validation,
>> routing or whatever. In this case the BPM engine should have two features:
>> 1.- Allow to open a document template, allow to edit it and send it to the
>> destination of the task.
>> 2.- Map some parts of the text into workflow variables for internal
>> processing.
>>
>> The first feature seems to be trivial but the BPM engine should have some
>> kind of template linked to the task so the user only have to modify certain
>> parts. For this purpose the BPM should have an HTML rich editor that can
>> read templates from the workflow definition.
>> The second feature can be easily done using custom TAGs. For example, one
>> can write the TAG $<destination_name> in the document wherever the document
>> should have the name of the destination user. Then, the user could write the
>> value of the TAG $<destination_name> or optionally this value could be
>> computed by the BPM engine. This way it is trivial to map the text content
>> to variables.
>>
>> The Balearic Islands Government have developed a jBPM 3 opensource project
>> that allows users to edit documents with Open Office using templates stored
>> in the tasks. Then users can edit them and FreeMarker parses the ODF
>> document extracting the values of the variables. I think it is a good
>> starting point to evaluate document-based workflows.
>>
>> Here you have a presentation of the project:
>>
>> http://www.plaanibal.com/c/document_library/get_file?p_l_id=11763&folderId=17101&name=DLFE-803.pdf
>> <http://www.plaanibal.com/c/document_library/get_file?p_l_id=11763&folderId=17101&name=DLFE-803.pdf>
>>
>> http://www.plaanibal.com/c/document_library/get_file?p_l_id=11763&folderId=17101&name=DLFE-804.pdf
>> <http://www.plaanibal.com/c/document_library/get_file?p_l_id=11763&folderId=17101&name=DLFE-804.pdf>
>>
>> The text is in Catalan but slides are self-explaniatiory.
>>
>> Pau Carré Cardona
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> jbpm-dev mailing list
>> jbpm-dev at lists.jboss.org
>> https://lists.jboss.org/mailman/listinfo/jbpm-dev
>>
>