Evaluation of Activiti

[larsson7]

Hello all!!

Today, i start an internship and i have to evaluate the two workflow tools, "Kaleo" and "Activiti". At the end of the evaluation, one of these tools should be integrated in Liferay. Now i have some questions about Activiti and i hope you can help me becasue it is the first time i work with this tool.   

With the Activiti Designer, i can create my workflows, translate them in XML and finally i can integrate this XML file in Liferay.
First of all, which activities can be acquired in a workflow? Can i shape more than create, retrieve, update or delete?
Activiti allows me to write code in JavaScript so i can shape every task, or?

The second question is about the data fields. Which data fields can be evaluated by the activiti engine?
The last question is about transitions between different tasks. Can i automate these transitions so that some processes proceed automatically?

Thanks for all your help, i hope to understand the main functions of activiti very soon.

Best regards,
Philipp

[jbarrez]

Did you already check http://www.emforge.net/web/activiti-liferay/blogs/-/blogs/activiti-plugin-for-liferay-6-1-1-ce-and-6... ?

With the Activiti Designer, i can create my workflows, translate them in XML and finally i can integrate this XML file in Liferay.
First of all, which activities can be acquired in a workflow? Can i shape more than create, retrieve, update or delete?
Activiti allows me to write code in JavaScript so i can shape every task, or?

I don't really understand what you mean by 'shape' … can you elaborate?

The second question is about the data fields. Which data fields can be evaluated by the activiti engine?

Activiti is a Java engine, hence anything Java including primitives will work.

The last question is about transitions between different tasks. Can i automate these transitions so that some processes proceed automatically?

Yes, absolutely. Don't use any wait states such as user tasks, but only service tasks.

[larsson7]

Thanks a lot for your answer!!

I allready installed Liferay and the new version of activiti. Activiti is integrated in Liferay so i can use for example the singleApprover to test an easy workflow. All points (My Workflow Tasks, My Submissions, Workflow Configuration and Workflow) are shown on the main page of Liferay(under Control Panel). But, the Kaleo workflow engine offers exactly the same points on the main page of Liferay. So the representation of both tools in Liferay is the same?! It makes me a little bit unsure that i amke everything right.

With shape i mean.. Which tasks / activities can be involved in a workflow? More than just create, retrieve, update and delete?

I know my questions are bumbling, sorry for that.

[jbarrez]

I allready installed Liferay and the new version of activiti. Activiti is integrated in Liferay so i can use for example the singleApprover to test an easy workflow. All points (My Workflow Tasks, My Submissions, Workflow Configuration and Workflow) are shown on the main page of Liferay(under Control Panel). But, the Kaleo workflow engine offers exactly the same points on the main page of Liferay. So the representation of both tools in Liferay is the same?! It makes me a little bit unsure that i amke everything right.

I'm assuming that Liferay has some kind of 'workflow integration layer', ie that they have an interface which both workflow engines then implement. And the ui only talks with this interface.

With shape i mean.. Which tasks / activities can be involved in a workflow? More than just create, retrieve, update and delete?

Activiti is a BPMN 2.0 engine, and supports following BPMN 'shapes': http://activiti.org/userguide/index.html#bpmnConstructs