topic Re: Using Alfresco for a BPM process in Alfresco Archive

Using Alfresco for a BPM process

konsultex — Sun, 19 Aug 2007 23:02:32 GMT

I have Alfresco (2.1) in use for managing documentation for an engineering project and the company is very pleased with the solution. This company has a home grown ERP solution and now has a request to implement a process for approving purchase order payments which are not related to this particular

Re: Using Alfresco for a BPM process

davidc — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 10:37:38 GMT

a) regarding the scanner control, is Kofax the only solution?

I don't think so - I believe there may integrations for eCopy and Filemark.

b) in case the first step does not yet have a document, can a jBPM complex process be started in Alfresco without a document?

No.

If we go this route, would we be forcing Alfresco to do things not planned for it?

Don't think so, although customisation is required for ERP integration etc

Re: Using Alfresco for a BPM process

joserra — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 11:51:00 GMT

b) in case the first step does not yet have a document, can a jBPM complex process be started in Alfresco without a document?

No.

We may have the same problem. We have processes based on documents, and others not. if the process is started with alfresco, can we access the full API of jBPM? should we create processes in different ways if they hve documents or not?

Re: Using Alfresco for a BPM process

konsultex — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 14:22:29 GMT

David;

Thanks for the answers. I have a follow up question to the scanner. I just want to start the scanner from the Alfresco web client and see the image before saving. Is this impossible, difficult or easy to do without a package like eCopy or Kofax?

Re: Using Alfresco for a BPM process

davidc — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 14:30:55 GMT

We may have the same problem. We have processes based on documents, and others not. if the process is started with alfresco, can we access the full API of jBPM? should we create processes in different ways if they hve documents or not?

The UI in 2.1 community does not allow the start of a workflow without docs. However, the workflow service does allow this.

A fix has been made recently to allow a custom Web Client action to launch a workflow without docs. See http://forums.alfresco.com/viewtopic.php?p=26684