Multi-instance collection and element variable

[turrian]

In the Activiti User Guide 5.3, in the Multi-instance section, there is an exemple showing how using collection and elementVariable to get something like this:

<userTask id="miTasks" name="My Task" activiti:assignee="${assignee}">
  <multiInstanceLoopCharacteristics isSequential="false"
     activiti:collection="assigneeList" activiti:elementVariable="assignee" >
  </multiInstanceLoopCharacteristics>
</userTask>

How can I define such a task with Activiti Modeler ?

[frederikherema1]

You can define the loopcharacteristincs on the modeler. unfortunatly, the activiti-extentions (activiti:collection activiti:elementVariable) are not supported by the modeler.

As stated in the userguide, these extentions are shorthand for the BPMN way of defining (loopDataInputRef, loopDataItem) but don't support using "expression"

The downside of the loopDataInputRef and inputDataItem is that 1) the names are pretty hard to remember and 2) due to the BPMN 2.0 schema restrictions they can't contain expressions. Activiti solves this by offering the collection and elementVariable attributes on the multiInstanceCharacteristics:

[turrian]

So if I want to be able to use all the activiti-extentions what is the best way/tool to use to make workflow definition.

By the way I think the modeler is pretty smart and intuitive. Will the modeler support all the activiti-extensions in the future ?

[jbarrez]

We would like it obviously, but we currently don't have the knowledge on how to do it (it would require time researching the Signavio codebase - time, which we currently don't have 😉 )