topic Starting Activiti Workflow by Execute Script fails in Alfresco Archive

Starting Activiti Workflow by Execute Script fails

devodl — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 01:17:54 GMT

[size=150]Summary[/size]Environment: Alfresco 4.0.cProblem: Error produced when a Folder Rule calls Execute Script to start Activiti Workflow Error: 2012-01-18 19:38:03,338 ERROR [extensions.webscripts.AbstractRuntime] [http-8080-24] Exception from executeScript - redirecting to status template er

Re: Starting Activiti Workflow by Execute Script fails

amandaluniz_z — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 16:55:57 GMT

Hi

The main error is this one:

Caused by: org.activiti.engine.impl.javax.el.PropertyNotFoundException: Could not find property properties in class java.lang.String
   at org.activiti.engine.impl.javax.el.BeanELResolver.toBeanProperty(BeanELResolver.java:621)
   at org.activiti.engine.impl.javax.el.BeanELResolver.getValue(BeanELResolver.java:298)
   at org.activiti.engine.impl.javax.el.CompositeELResolver.getValue(CompositeELResolver.java:231)
   at org.activiti.engine.impl.juel.AstProperty.eval(AstProperty.java:61)
   at org.activiti.engine.impl.juel.AstProperty.eval(AstProperty.java:52)
   at org.activiti.engine.impl.juel.AstEval.eval(AstEval.java:50)
   at org.activiti.engine.impl.juel.AstNode.getValue(AstNode.java:26)
   at org.activiti.engine.impl.juel.TreeValueExpression.getValue(TreeValueExpression.java:114)
   at org.activiti.engine.impl.delegate.ExpressionGetInvocation.invoke(ExpressionGetInvocation.java:33)
   at org.activiti.engine.impl.delegate.DelegateInvocation.proceed(DelegateInvocation.java:37)

So you trying to retrieve the "properties" property from a String object

Re: Starting Activiti Workflow by Execute Script fails

devodl — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 19:40:00 GMT

Thanks for the response.
I'm new to Alfresco and the Activiti workflow engine and I have been basing my work on the samples so I haven't explicitly written any code that would reference a property named "properties". Your response caused me to take a harder look at how the Script calls the Workflow and I configured a new workflow only I used the lifecycle-process.bpmn20.xml.sample that ships with Alfresco. The lifecycle-process starts a workflow with a single person Review defined as follows:
Script assignment of workflow parameter: workflow.parameters["bpm:assignee"] = person;
Workflow use of parameter

<userTask id="reviewTask" name="Review Task" activiti:assignee="${bpm_assignee.properties.userName}" activiti:formKey="wf:activitiReviewTask">
‍‍

The workflow <userTask> for the alfGroupReview.bpmn20.xml that fails is defined as follows:
Script assignment of workflow parameter: workflow.parameters["bpm:groupAssignee"] = "GROUP_" + siteName + "_collaborators";
Workflow use of parameter

<userTask id="reviewTask" name="Acquire Review Task" activiti:candidateGroups="${bpm_groupAssignee.properties.authorityName}" activiti:formKey="wf:activitiReviewTask">
‍‍

I suspect that it is the ${bpm_groupAssignee.properties.authorityName} that is causing the property "properties" error since the calling script is able to find the GROUP_testbed_collaborators group for use as the groupAssignee. Perhaps the workflow is unable to resolve ${bpm_groupAssignee.properties.authorityName} to the group name parameter. Or perhaps it resolves to GROUP_testbed_collaborators but that value is invalid.

The question comes down to this:
How do you pass the name of a Group as a parameter to a workflow so that it is resolved and used by the task?

Your help is greatly appreciated.

Re: Starting Activiti Workflow by Execute Script fails

amandaluniz_z — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 09:45:34 GMT

Yes, in your script you're assigning a string value to you bpm_groupAssignee variable:

workflow.parameters["bpm:groupAssignee"] = "GROUP_" + siteName + "_collaborators";

The same way you assign bpm_assignee you assigning a person object (not a string), you'll need to assign a group object to groupAssignee rather than assigning the group name string value.

For that purpose:


workflow.parameters["bpm:groupAssignee"] = people.getGroup( "GROUP_" + siteName + "_collaborators");
‍‍‍

Try it that way… it should work.

Regards,
Adei

Re: Starting Activiti Workflow by Execute Script fails

devodl — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 23:07:09 GMT

Adei,
Thank you so much!
You explanation made sense, I changed my script code and it now works properly.

I clearly need to spend more time understanding the script objects and Activiti objects and how to interface the two.

Thanks again!
Steve

Re: Starting Activiti Workflow by Execute Script fails

amandaluniz_z — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 11:30:45 GMT

Glad it works!

The best thing you can do about the workflow models is check out the workflowModel.xml file which defines the model. You can find it in alfresco/WEB-INF/classes/alfresco/model

all the properties used by the workflows such as bpm_assignee, bpm_groupAssignee, bpm_workflowDueDate, etc. are defined there…

Adei