topic Re: Activiti Editor in 5.13 in Alfresco Archive

Activiti Editor in 5.13

dancingfighterg — Wed, 08 Apr 2015 18:10:54 GMT

Hello, we are looking to convert all our old process models that are in the old JBPM engine to Activiti and I have been playing with demo setup on the activiti site. My questions revolves around the visual editor. Which version of Activiti includes that piece. We are currently in version 5.13 and we

Re: Activiti Editor in 5.13

yvoswillens — Thu, 09 Apr 2015 08:18:03 GMT

Hi,

are you referring to Activiti Cloud? (activiti.alfresco.com)
Activiti open source contains a slimmed down version of the same visual modelling tool. It's called Activiti Modeler and is part of the Activiti Explorer.
More info on this can be found here; http://activiti.org/userguide/index.html#activitiModeler

The cloud version is also available as a commercial on premise product. More info on that can be found here; http://www.alfresco.com/products/activiti

Regards,

Yvo

Re: Activiti Editor in 5.13

dancingfighterg — Thu, 09 Apr 2015 18:07:39 GMT

Thanks Yvoswillens for getting back to me. We are planning to upgrade the engine to 5.17 which should have the activiti Modeler. I'm assuming that in order to get the BPM Suite on premise that is something we would have to purchase with our existing Alfresco One Enterprise installation.

Re: Activiti Editor in 5.13

dancingfighterg — Fri, 10 Apr 2015 18:17:50 GMT

Hello Yvoswillins, we are planning to upgrade our Alfresco 4.0 to 4.2 and we were curious if there is a specific version of Activiti that needs to be implemented along side 4.2. If it does please let us know but if not and we can use the update 5.17 version with our 4.2 upgrade that would be great.

Re: Activiti Editor in 5.13

jbarrez — Tue, 14 Apr 2015 12:29:04 GMT

> I'm assuming that in order to get the BPM Suite on premise that is something we would have to purchase with our existing Alfresco One Enterprise installation.

Correct. There are trial versions you can obtain too, through the regular Alresco channels

Re: Activiti Editor in 5.13

dancingfighterg — Fri, 24 Apr 2015 18:23:57 GMT

Cool. Thanks for the information. Question for you if you don't mind. What are some comparable features that Activiti has to the big wig BPMS such as IBM, K2, Ninnex, etc, etc. Activiti is my number option in terms of open source but I'm still looking those non-open source options to see what features would I miss or get with activiti

Re: Activiti Editor in 5.13

jbarrez — Tue, 28 Apr 2015 18:35:54 GMT

Depends on what you mean with 'open source features' of course 😉

In some of the leads, we've won from some of the vendors you mention there. But of course, every customer has its own set of rules to decide … so it's very hard to say which feature was the one that tipped the scales.

Re: Activiti Editor in 5.13

dancingfighterg — Tue, 28 Apr 2015 18:47:36 GMT

Hey bud,

I guess what I really mean is what BPMS features does Activiti Suite has that is comparable to the big wigs I listed? Overall we are trying to assess if the suite has most of the features that a business analyst and a developer will need to make and update workflows quickly for the business

Re: Activiti Editor in 5.13

jbarrez — Tue, 28 Apr 2015 19:26:07 GMT

Well, I will obviously say 'yes, it has comparable features', but I'm biased 😉

It has web based process and forms editing and is being used by some big companies (which I can't name … sigh) happily. But again, your users might just need that one feature that we don't have … so best is to play around with the trail and reach out to the Alfresco sales people on the product page to actually see if it's a fit.

Re: Activiti Editor in 5.13

dancingfighterg — Tue, 28 Apr 2015 20:28:45 GMT

Thanks for the reply. I'm currently working with the enterprise trial version now. I'm currently trying to re-create a couple of workflows that we have on a simple level. Couple of questions,

Is their an ability to have custom reporting for workflows?
Is their any limitations on the form editor that I need to know about? Working to see what type of forms I can build

Re: Activiti Editor in 5.13

dancingfighterg — Mon, 04 May 2015 13:30:57 GMT

Hey Jbarrez,

Couple of additional questions for you?

We are currently using the old explorer UI to process our workflows using the old engine jbpm. The workflows that we have a fairly simply but I was curious with 20 fairly simply workflow that gather approval for contracts and gathers a final signature what would be your recommend course of action to move these workflows to the activiti engine. There is of course some custom code in place but I just curious what would be a decent estimate on the amount of work that is needed to move old workflows to activiti?

Our initial idea is to do a phase approach where we re-produce all the workflows in the suite using the activiti suite. We keep our current explorer and with our current workflows going into we either cancel or complete the remaining workflows in the jpbm engine. We heard its very hard to move in progress workflows over.

Also, is their a place where you list the next enhancements that will be coming out for activiti soon? We know that the suite is growing in features and I want communicate that to my management team

Re: Activiti Editor in 5.13

jbarrez — Thu, 07 May 2015 12:51:21 GMT

> Is their an ability to have custom reporting for workflows?

Yes, that's possible, but there is no UI for it yet. It's a combination of manual database changes and custom code

> Is their any limitations on the form editor that I need to know about?

Plenty, it's an always evolving product 😉

> what would be a decent estimate on the amount of work that is needed to move old workflows to activiti?

It all depends on the complexity of the process. If they are simple, then the conversion is simple. Concepts between jbpm and Activiti are fairly similar, although of course the language is different (jpdl vs bpmn)

> We keep our current explorer and with our current workflows going into we either cancel or complete the remaining workflows in the jpbm engine.

That is the safest strategy indeed.

> Also, is their a place where you list the next enhancements that will be coming out for activiti soon?

Our sales people have roadmaps, but i dont think there is anything online. If you get into contact with anyone from Alfresco sales (not the devs, you know, we only write it 😉 ) they will be able to provide exactly that to you!

Re: Activiti Editor in 5.13

dancingfighterg — Thu, 07 May 2015 17:21:52 GMT

Thanks J for the information. I've contact Greg Harper for information on the new enhancements that are coming out for the suite. At base level I'm able to make workflows that our similar to the ones we are using now but I'm curious about the interface that the user will see. Currently the explorer shows:

Task in my to list
Pool Task
Overall workflows in flux

Currently I don't see that setup in the cloud version so I'm curious does the end user interface for seeing existing workflows look similar to the explorer?

Re: Activiti Editor in 5.13

jbarrez — Mon, 18 May 2015 14:23:28 GMT

It's the same:
* task in my list is the default view
* pool taks are the 'group tasks'
* workflows in flux is being handled by the Activiti Administrator application

If you don't see the group view in the cloud, that's most likely because you are not in a group (only admins can create groups).
Also note that the cloud version is very outdated and we're working on getting the newest version up and running in the cloud.