Forms and External Forms

[cmontagut]

Hi everyone

We are evaluating bpm open source engines for a proyect, and had a look to Activiti.

It look's very nice and seems to fullfill all our requirements.

But… we looked at the Forms and we are going to need more control over the UI (events, more complex controls like trees, maps, etc).

We saw in the documentation that is posible to use a External Form interface. A couple of questions that arised:

1. This external forms, will be able to run insede the Activiti Explorer?
2. Is there any extra docuemntation about how to integrate external forms?

Thanks in advance and congratullations for the proyect.

Best Regards

Carlos

[ronald_van_kuij]

1:no, unless they are extensions of the current forms solution, or you extend the explorer
2:not realy, but you can use the formkey to determine which custom form you need to open and the form properties is you want your custom forms to be dynamic based on these properties.

It's fairly straight forward.

[cmontagut]

Thanks Ronald for your quick and complete answer.

I got a few more questions:

1:no, unless they are extensions of the current forms solution, or you extend the explorer

1. Have someone in the comunity done it before? If yes what web framework they used?, If no, what framework will be the more apropiated to integrate insied the explorer based on Activiti design?

2:not realy, but you can use the formkey to determine which custom form you need to open and the form properties is you want your custom forms to be dynamic based on these properties.

2. But these means that we loose all the explorer interface, we will have to develope the inbox and all the other functionality by our own, is that right?

Thanks in advance for your answers.

Best Regards

Carlos

[ronald_van_kuij]

1: I don't think so and I would not go that way…. To difficult

2: developing an inbox in your own ui framework is way more easy than extending the explorer so in the end it is a fully customized app.

We used cdi and jsf in one project and tapestry in another. Works like a charm