Modeling flow for N number of concurrent tasks...

[wolpert]

Not sure where to ask this on the forums, or even if this is the right set of forums to ask. I need to model multiple concurrent flows from a parallel gateway, where for one originating process, their could be N number of flows.

In a made up example process, a customer is returning merchandise, and they are returning N number of items, I need to setup a flow for each item, and in this case, would like to join them up at the end as well. How do you document that in Activiti via the Modeler webapp to represent that their is an N number (or unkown number) of equivalent flows occurring? If this is explained somewhere, can you point me to the URL? I've had trouble finding the correct way.

[jbarrez]

You would need to have a 'multi instance' marker on your activities. It is planned for 5.2, but it'll probably be postponed to 5.3 due to some low-level bugs that were found and needed fixing.

[wolpert]

Is there any way to handle it now? Or is it a matter of just waiting until 5.2/5.3 to do it 'the right way'?

[jbarrez]

You can always take a look at the code in AbstractBpmnActivity, that should give you insight in how the Activiti concurrency is handled.
With this knowledge, it should be possible to write your own ActivityBehavior which is able to do what you want (which is excatly how we will implement the multi instance stuff)

[wolpert]

Is this behavior now being considered for 5.3? Is there a tracking ticket I can use to monitor progress?

[jbarrez]

I'm currently implementing it.

This is the JIRA issue: http://jira.codehaus.org/browse/ACT-506