Activiti Designer 5.9.1 released

[trademak]

Hi all,

I've just released a new version of the Activiti Designer (5.9.1).
This version was intended to be just a bug fix release but also includes:

- Pools and lanes support. A lot of people were asking for this so I'm happy to say that it's included now.
I'm also looking for feedback on how this support can be improved.
Be aware that if you add more than one pool to the diagram, Activiti will see these pools as separate processes.
- Added support for event gateways
- Added support for intermediate none throw event
- Bug fixes based on feedback on version 5.9.0

As always I welcome any feedback and let me hear about new features you would like to see added.

Best regards,

[weissenberg]

Hi trademak,

its good to have pools now, but what about message flow between pools (and data objects)?

My further simple extension wishes are:
- comment annotations in process models
- *collapsable* subprocesses

Best regards,

[trademak]

Hi,

Thanks, comment annotations and collapsible sub process are on my list as well, so that's good.
There's no support for message flows between pools, because that's also not yet supported in the Activiti Engine.
But this could be a feature request for the Activiti Engine.

Best regards,

[pgadecki]

Could you keep repositories for old versions?

When the new release comes out my build process brakes down as there is no Activiti Designer feature with a previous version in the repository location specified in my target file. Maybe instead of keeping it zipped you can have separate version subdirectories on the server?

[trademak]

Hi,

Could you elaborate a bit more on what you are using in your build process? Are you customizing the Activiti Designer or something like that? What functionality are you adding?
I don't think separate version URLs would be a solution.

Best regards,

[pgadecki]

I'm customizing Designer, designer feature is required by some plugins in my Eclipse RCP feature based project which is build on maven+tycho. It has *.target files which, among other locations that provide required features, contains:

<location includeAllPlatforms="false" includeMode="planner" includeSource="false" type="InstallableUnit">
<unit id="org.activiti.designer.feature.feature.group" version="5.9.1"/>
<repository location="http://activiti.org/designer/update/'/>
</location>

During build process tycho tries to assemble target platform based on the information in my *.target file. When you release new version, the old one is no longer available in  location="http://activiti.org/designer/update/" and tycho breaks the build.

[oca]

Hi,
thanks, changeing element's type and changeing task name work fine for me now.

There is still a small glitch,  the icon "change element type" on the surronding menu of a start element is corrupted (this icon on other element  is fine)
Cheers.

Olivier

[oca]

BTW I just would like to comment this one :

There's no support for message flows between pools, because that's also not yet supported in the Activiti Engine.

Well… support is not complete for sure, but there is still a few things that are allready working with version 5.9 of the engine.
I'm talking about the cxf exemples provided with version 5.9

for instance, let's have a look at …\activiti-5.9\workspace\activiti-cxf-examples\src\test\resources\org\activiti\engine\impl\webservice\WebServiceTaskTest.testWebServiceInvocation.bpmn20.xml

or even a more complete one : …\activiti-5.9\workspace\activiti-cxf-examples\src\test\resources\org\activiti\engine\test\bpmn\sendtask\WebServiceUELTest.testAsyncInvocationWithDataFlowUEL.bpmn20.xml

in these files, there are some messages logic that would be fine to do with the designer, by using a message flow to a non executable pool for instance.

ideally, I would like to drag and drop information from xsd/wsdl files direcly to  "message flow" and/or "##webservice service task " on the diagram to generate bpmn interface, message, itemDefinition, ioSpecification, dataInputAssociation and so on … that would be really usefull even with the actual version of the engine…

Cheers

Olivier

[trademak]

@oca The start event change element icon is not a bug, at the moment there's just no support to change a start event, so the icon is grayed out

About the message flow discussion, to me this is different from the example you are giving.
Message flows between pools would mean in Activiti that you can send a message from one process definition to another.
This is a feature that's not yet implemented.

The web service example you are giving is different. What you are asking for is to add support to import an XSD and WSDL and generate the message, interface definition etc out of it.
I don't see the relationship with a pool with this, can you explain what you mean with this?
But of course this is a valid feature request and certainly something to look into.

Best regards,

[trademak]

@pgadecki okay but why don't you use a local archived site then?
Why are you pointing to the remote update site?

Best regards,