topic Re: Question on Activiti Designer in Alfresco Archive

Question on Activiti Designer

andrea_zoppello — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 12:19:40 GMT

Hi,First off all my congratulation for the project! Great Stuff…I'm evaluating activiti, and in particular the Eclipse Designer and i've some consideration question:1) I appreciate the choose of Graphiti instead of GMF. Great choice…. In my opinion Graphiti is theright way towards the generation of

Re: Question on Activiti Designer

trademak — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 17:53:38 GMT

Hi Andrea,

1) We like Graphiti too 😉
2) This should definitely work. Make sure you've saved the diagram before you choose to generate. Otherwise post the diagram to this post and I will check for possible issues.
3) I don't see any problem using the Maven project layout. Business people will use the Activiti Modeler to model the processes. Then the technical specialists take over and make the process running with the Activiti Designer and they understand Maven I think.
4) We currently only support Java for the implementation of the service task, so that's why there is a Java class property. We'll also support other types of service tasks, foremost web service tasks and then the property view of a service task will have more options.
5) We thought of supporting pools and lanes and we'll probably support it in coming releases. But from a technical point of view, lanes and pools are not realy necessary.

Best regards,

Tijs Rademakers

Re: Question on Activiti Designer

andrea_zoppello — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 12:35:30 GMT

Hi,

Thanks off all for the response.

2) Sorry for previous message it's working…. i was not able to find the file.. but now i could
confirm it's working

3) Yeah i agree… there's no problem within maven layout, it's great. But i would still prefer
the "choice" to use or not the "maven layout" instead to be forced to use…
A checkbox in the wizard "Use Maven Layout " would help….

4) As for the point 3) let the user to choice what a service task is… "A webservice", " A Java Class"
"An OSGi service"….

5) From technical point of view pool and lanes could be not important….
but for business analyst will be…. so hope to have these supported in future

Regards

Andrea

Re: Question on Activiti Designer

patobe — Thu, 07 Oct 2010 09:52:07 GMT

Another aspect of including pools and lanes in the actual process definition is that the business people will be able to recognize the process they specified with the modelling tool. If the the graphical layout, which hopefully will be included in some future release, is missing pools and lanes it can be an issue for the business people as well as users of any client displaying the graphical layout.

Regards
/Patrick

Re: Question on Activiti Designer

andrea_zoppello — Fri, 08 Oct 2010 08:19:08 GMT

Hi Patrick,

Yes the point within a BPMN Tools is that bpmn is mainly target to business analyst *not developers*.
At least this is my experience.

If you try to go to customers and try to give too much *technical detailed* tools, where for example you ask for java
classes, xpath expressions… and all of sort of this technical stuff you'll probably fail.

In my opinion the correct approcah is to give to users a tool, where a bpmn analyst coukld use bpmn to model
process that will contains both human task activisties, and service activities ( but without to bound to java for example ).

A business analyst really need to know that there are some services that could be composed, without to
worry about technical details ( if the service is a java class, a webservice… or any other stuff ).

Andrea

Another aspect of including pools and lanes in the actual process definition is that the business people will be able to recognize the process they specified with the modelling tool. If the the graphical layout, which hopefully will be included in some future release, is missing pools and lanes it can be an issue for the business people as well as users of any client displaying the graphical layout.

Regards
/Patrick

Re: Question on Activiti Designer

trademak — Fri, 08 Oct 2010 17:50:09 GMT

To my opinion Activiti supports the two different target users with two tools:

Business and process analysts –> Activiti Modeler
Designers and developers –> Activiti Designer

We will work on the integration between the two tools, which currently doesn't exist.
I'm really interested in your view on this.

Best regards,

Tijs

Re: Question on Activiti Designer

andrea_zoppello — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 08:41:43 GMT

Hi Tijs,

If you state that Activiti Designer is targeted to designers/developers the
choice made for the designer ( maven project structure, java class file for service ) *definitely make sense*.

If i've understand well, you're thinking a scenario where a business analyst first use the Activiti Modeler, and then
the developers import this in the Designer to work at technical level on the processes.

From my point of view i would like to have the Activiti Designer to taget both the analyst and developer.
Maybe it could be helpfull to share with you which is the way i'm currently working with BPMN now.

1 ) First off all the analyst use an eclipse based designer ( the one provided by the eclipse project ).
At this point the analyst don't know about service details, java classes and othe technical stuff.

2 ) The developers could start from this using annotation to provide * technical details * on service
tasks…. and conditions on exclusive gateways for example…
Developers are free to add or remove task to the diagram if the technical drive require this.

Within this approach both users are using the same tool… there's no need to import/export beteween tools,
and each user could work on the process focusing on what he has to do…

Instead to see the "Designer" and "Modeler" tools seen as targeted to different users, i would still
prefer to have a vision where you would use the "Web ( Modeler )" version where you need collaborative
working capabilities and the "Eclipse version" where you would still want to have a desktop tool
based on eclipse.

I would like to have an "Eclipse Based" tools, but really need a complete tool that let me to start
from the analysis and end with the deployable processes.

I think that activiti designer is quite good even if it 's in beta, ant not far from what i need.

Two simple enhancements that would help are for example:

1) Let the user to choose the project strcuture layout ( not force a maven structure )
2) For service task ( let the user free to enter a generic service identifier, and let the translation
to this id to a java class, a webservice, an osgi service as a detail, or let the user to choose….
The choice of a java class could stay there, but let the user to be more generic if he wants.. )

I'm saying this beacuse for example in my scenario…. service task in bpmn diagrams are services
registered within an OSGi container…..

A more complicated thing is the support of pool and lanes…

Hope this helps

Regards
Andrea

Re: Question on Activiti Designer

patobe — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 10:30:30 GMT

I can see 2 very useful use cases:

Use case 1

1. The business analyst creates the process model in the web based modelling tool (really useful with a web based modelling tool which doesn't need to be distributed within the organisation).
2. The business analyst stores the model artifacts with the web based life cycle management tool (again really useful to have a web based collaboration tool).
3. The process designer import the model into the eclipse designer.
4. The process designer flesh out the details with the help of any developers needed (could be involving developers from different diciplines depending on required integrations, connections to web services, etc.)
5. The process designer store the design artifacts in the life cycle management tool.
6. The process manager implements the process in the activiti runtime engine (using available deployment mechanisms)

Use case 2

1. The process manager analyzes the runtime data available form the activiti engine
2. The process manager sits down with the business analyst to improve the implemented process using the web based modeller
3. The business analyst/process manager updates model in the life cycle tool
4. The process designer imports the updated model in the eclipse designer to once again flesh out the details with the help of needed developers (in the phase it would be extremly useful to be able to merge the previous design with the updated model)
5. The process designer updates the design artifacts in the life cycle tool
6. The process manager deploys the updated process artifacts to the activiti runtime engine

The above use cases however has nothing to do with the need of pools and swimlanes in the eclipse designer. As I see it, pools and swimlanes are needed in the graphical representation created by the eclipse designer. This image can then be included in the deployment to the runtime engine and made available to any user of any client application. This could improve the user experience significantly by not only vizualing the process but also showing the progress, trails, remaining steps where and when the user will be involved in the process.

Regards
/Patrick

Re: Question on Activiti Designer

trademak — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 16:04:10 GMT

Hi Andrea and Patrick,

Thanks for the feedback.
Indeed I was thinking about the modeler being the business analyst tool and the designer being the developer tool. But I think you're right that ideally a business analyst must also be able to work with the designer if he/she would like a desktop tool.
I will think things through and see if we can implement the designer with a choice of project structure and an implementation free service task. The support of pools and lanes is already on our list.

Best regards,

Tijs

Re: Question on Activiti Designer

andrea_zoppello — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 08:15:14 GMT

Hi Tijs,

I'm very happy to hear you'll try to get our feedback.

I'm also interested to know more about the "Activiti Book" you've in progress. ( Not sure if this is the right thread to discuss
about ) but i've heard from twitter and i'm interested to buy an MEAP copy when it will be available.

Do you have any news about any date for a first MEAP availability???

Andrea

Re: Question on Activiti Designer

trademak — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 20:50:21 GMT

Hi Andrea,

We'll share a list of improvements and features for the Activiti Designer in the coming days, so please provide feedback if you have the time.
The BPMN 2.0 with Activiti book from Manning will probably in MEAP in november. We're currently working on chapter 3 and 4, so we're progressing pretty well.

Best regards,

Tijs

Re: Question on Activiti Designer

rrabbit — Sat, 27 Nov 2010 17:57:13 GMT

I'm also struggling with using Activiti Designer.
It doesn't seem to support attributes like formkey for tasks or email service task type, so you have to add those things in the generated XML file. However, when you then extend the diagram and export again, it overwrites your changes.

Is it that the Designer is still incomplete and will support these attributes in the future, or am I doing it wrong?

Re: Question on Activiti Designer

trademak — Sat, 27 Nov 2010 19:09:11 GMT

The current version of the Activiti Designer was a first release which implemented the most common functionality.
The things you are missing right now will be available in the next release on December 1st.
A list of functionality that will be in there:

- Support for e-mail and manual tasks
- Field extensions editor for the Service task and support for expressions
- Formkey attribute for User tasks
- Possibility to add your own developed nodes to the Designer with the Designer extension functionality
- First start with an XML editor with content assist
- Automatic generation of the BPMN 2.0 XML and a process image after each save of the editor diagram (no need to for an explicit export).
- First start for a deployment editor with support to generate a BAR file

So on December 1st you will find a lot of additional functionality in the Designer.
Of course it will still not be feature complete, but we will enhance it in the coming versions.
It's very important to hear your feedback on this, because that will help us to get the tool better.

Best regards,

Tijs Rademakers

Re: Question on Activiti Designer

rrabbit — Sat, 27 Nov 2010 19:20:07 GMT

cool, thanks!

Re: Question on Activiti Designer

unknown-user — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 12:33:12 GMT

Hi all,

There is another aspect that speaks for implementing lanes in Designer:
Having lanes would open the possibility to assign candidate users/groups etc. to tasks in a more coarse grained way.
You do not need to open every task and to do the assignment, but you just do it for the lanes and then put the corresponding tasks on them.
Makes configuration easier and faster.

Regards,
Markus

Re: Question on Activiti Designer

trademak — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 12:36:44 GMT

Hi Markus,

That's true. We need to consider and prioritize this within the team.

Best regards,

Re: Question on Activiti Designer

ronald_van_kuij — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 15:13:42 GMT

I remember a discussion that actors assigned to tasks in lanes should not be considered persistent in BPMN. Bernd has more info on this. So it would still not work like e.g. in the older jBPM versions