topic Re: a voting mechanism? in Alfresco Archive

a voting mechanism?

lucille_arkenst — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 20:46:25 GMT

Is there such a thing where n number of people have to approve the documents? Not just one?

Re: a voting mechanism?

hsohaib — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 12:15:29 GMT

check the workflow definition "parallelreview_group_processdefinition.xml" in your "alfresco\WEB-INF\classes\alfresco\workflow" folder, you will find an example of how to do that

Re: a voting mechanism?

sethatrothbury — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 12:19:56 GMT

Yes there is. By using the aspect "bpm:assignees" more than one reviewer can be attached to a workflow. If you check your default installation, a good example comes installed for the WCM. The process definition can be found at: install_path/tomcat/webapps/alfresco/WEB-INF/classes/alfresco/workflow/submit_processdefinition.xml

This workflow allows for N users to be added to a list of users that need to approve in either a serial or a parallel manner, meaning they review one at a time or all at once respectively.

Re: a voting mechanism?

lucille_arkenst — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 14:59:13 GMT

Thank you both very much.

Seth, when you use aspect bpm:assignees… where does this get applied? In the definition or on the document itself?
Also, do you know if the task can be assigned to a folder, as opposed to just one document?

Basically, I need a pool of people to agree upon a folder of documents.

Thank you again.

Re: a voting mechanism?

invictus9 — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 15:19:09 GMT

Basically, I need a pool of people to agree upon a folder of documents.

Again, check out the parallel review work flow capabilities that are included within Alfresco. You will have to enable access to them – there is a context.xml file in your extension folder, with a suffix of .sample, that will enable access to the parallel reviews.

You also need to think fairly hard about the phrase "agree upon … documents." Does this mean that your review committee has to review every document and vote on it, or does a majority of your committee have to review a majority of your documents, or … You need to get very specific about the meaning of this to translate it into the work flow capabilities of Alfresco (or any other work flow management system).

Re: a voting mechanism?

sethatrothbury — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 17:58:11 GMT

The aspect is applied to the workflow task nodes that the documents are attached to. If we think of the aspect as a group of people, that group is passed from one task to another in the workflow, progressing with the workflow as the documents do.

Invictus is correct in pointing out that you should get very specific on what your workflow will actually do, especially if you follow the parallel path. When using a parallel review, you could allow the workflow to complete once, say as an example, 80% of the reviewers all approve the documents attached. It does have to be documents sadly, you can not start a workflow with a folder/space attached as a resource. It's just how the workflow package handles resources, it will handle any number of documents but not the folder that holds all of those documents.

Re: a voting mechanism?

lucille_arkenst — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 15:32:36 GMT

Good point. How did you come to learn about submit_processdefinition.xml and parallelreview_group_processdefinition.xml?

Re: a voting mechanism?

invictus9 — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 18:07:01 GMT

Good point. How did you come to learn about submit_processdefinition.xml and parallelreview_group_processdefinition.xml?

Lots of reading – this group of forums, the wiki, etc. I enabled the definitions on my evaluation server and played with it a fair bit. Then, I tried to work with some end users to translate their business process into some work flows. That's where the feces hit the fan – their concept of work flow and mine differ substantially, and when they say "review and approve," they really mean a more conversational process than the jBPM work flows support.

Re: a voting mechanism?

lucille_arkenst — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 20:41:03 GMT

I appreciate the info. Thank you very much.