Defining Messages or Signals in Activity Designer

[edcostello]

Is there any way to define the existence of a message or signal in the Activiti Designer so that they can be referenced from a Message Start Event / Signal Start Event?

I feel like I'm missing something really obvious so I'm hoping someone can point me in the right direction.

I'm trying to define a process in the Activiti Designer that's triggered in response to a message from an external system. I feel like I should be able to do this by:

• Use a Message Start Event
• Call the Start By Message variant of the Start Process REST API

Or alternatively do it with signals by

• Use a Signal Start Event
• Call the Signal Event Received REST API

Where I'm stuck is that I cannot see how to define the existence of the message or signal so that I can Select it in the messageRef or signalRef elements of the start event.

If I add a

<message>‍

or

<signal>‍

element directly to the BPMN XML I can select them in the reference, but cannot find a way to define these signals or events in the designer.

Of course if I've miss-understood and this is an inappropriate use of messages / signals, please let me know.

Thanks in advance.

[warper]

In Eclipse:
1) activate Activiti perspective
2) open your process diagram
3) make left click on empty space in process diagram so Activity Designer deselects any selected process element
4) select Properties tab - it should show properties for process diagram now
5) select Signals or Messages subtab in properties tab
6) press New button, enter signal name and id, press OK
Now you can see signal/message in the list