Localized values for name and description elements in BPMN

[rstevehole]

We have a requirement to localize our BPMN definitions so that they render in the appropriate language when presented in the Web UI. Specifically this means that we want the name and description elements for process definitions, instances and tasks to have language specific variants. I've looked around to see what vehicles are available for this within BPMN and it doesn't look like there is any built in support for it.

What is the best practice for this? We can't possibly be the first with this requirement.

One thought that I had was to place a message code in the name and description fields and then extend the views to try to resolve the name and description values through the message bundles and replace the value with a hit.

[martin_grofcik]

Hi Steve,

What is the best practice for this?

I do not know.

We can't possibly be the first with this requirement.

No, we support it in our products too.

I would recommend to use BPMN extension elements to store localized attributes. After that you can use them in the runtime e.g. in the user task behavior.

Regards
Martin

[jbarrez]

In v5 (and more in v6), this is implemented: Check for example https://github.com/Activiti/Activiti/blob/activiti6/modules/activiti-engine/src/test/java/org/activi...

[rstevehole]

Thanks Joram. I can see from the example code how it is supposed to work. A couple of related questions then:

1. Will this be supported in the Eclipse designer moving forward or just in the Activity Designer web interface?
2. Is there documentation for it.

We want 3rd parties to be able to work with the localization support, so we will need to provide some tooling and/or documentation for the facility. I'm trying to get an idea of what we will need to do to supplement Activiti provided resources for this project. Thanks.

[jbarrez]

1. It will be, one day. These things take way more time than writing the backend code 🙂
2. Not yet, sadly. The localization features are driven mostly by contributes. But now v6 is getting into its final shape, we are working on docs and it will surely be added in the future.