Deploying Activiti in OSGi container and other options

[anjan]

Hi, currently we have a document management software(dms) that runs under OSGi environment.  We would like to integrate it with Activiti (similar to how Activiti is integrated with Alfresco).  But we would like to deploy Activiti as a standalone application so that multiple instances of our dms software (in multi-tenanat model) can use same Activiti.

Here are our questions:
1. I understand that we can use activiti-rest web application deployed separately, but it will require secure communication.  Each of my dms instance will have it's own set of users and groups.  In this scenario, how would I integrate with activiti-rest web application.

2. Is there any better alternative than deploying activiti(as bundles) in each of my dms instances?

Please suggest.

[anjan]

I looked at the Multitenancy feature of Activiti and this should help me to distinguish tenenant specific workflow definitions.  But I am still not sure how the authentication part will work.  Do I have to implement the necessary Identity management interfaces?  Please suggest.

[jbarrez]

No, Activiti is identity agnostic. It will only store information (assignee/groups/…) but not enforce those. That has to be done by yourself in logic that wraps the Activiti calls.

[anjan]

Hi Joram, I understand that Activiti is identity agnostic.  But what I am trying to get is if I have deployed tenant specific workflow definitions in Activiti and I would like to show only those (tenant specific) definitions to the user in the tenant specific dms, then I still need to authenticate with the activiti-rest web app correct?  In that case what are the credentials to use.

[trademak]

You would need to plugin a custom identity manager to make this work. We do this as well for our cloud environment. This means that you need to define a custom REST API to query against the Activiti Engine. This allows you to include tenant id or user id information in queries against Activiti.

Best regards,