Question on Activiti Designer

[andrea_zoppello]

Hi,

First off all my congratulation for the project! Great Stuff…


I'm evaluating activiti, and in particular the Eclipse Designer and i've some consideration question:

1) I appreciate the choose of Graphiti instead of GMF. Great choice…. In my opinion Graphiti is the
right way towards the generation of Graphical Editors..

2) I'm not able to get the bpmn2 xml file generated. When i right.click and choose "Export BPMN2 XML"
i've no error but i cannot find the bpmn2 file…. I've try to look at error tab in eclipse but it seems there are no
error, so i cannot figure where the problem is…

3) I see that when i create an Activiti project, a project with default maven layout is generated.
Now Maven sounds good, and it's great…. but there could be some sistuation where it would be possible
to use the designer without to be forced to use a maven layout for the project.

A BPMN modeler designer, could be ( and probably would be ) used in first step also by not-technical,
not-developer people…. so having the project structure to be maven like could be not the best choice.

3) I see that when  i use service task you must specify a Java Class as parameter
I'm not a BPMN2 Spec expert so i don't know how this is expresses in BPMN but in my opinion a service task
shoud take a "service identifier" parameter and let to a technical detail choice is this is would be a java class,
or something else….

4) Do you plan to support pool and lanes????

Andrea

[trademak]

Hi Andrea,

1) We like Graphiti too 😉
2) This should definitely work. Make sure you've saved the diagram before you choose to generate. Otherwise post the diagram to this post and I will check for possible issues.
3) I don't see any problem using the Maven project layout. Business people will use the Activiti Modeler to model the processes. Then the technical specialists take over and make the process running with the Activiti Designer and they understand Maven I think.
4) We currently only support Java for the implementation of the service task, so that's why there is a Java class property. We'll also support other types of service tasks, foremost web service tasks and then the property view of a service task will have more options.
5) We thought of supporting pools and lanes and we'll probably support it in coming releases. But from a technical point of view, lanes and pools are not realy necessary.

Best regards,

Tijs Rademakers

[andrea_zoppello]

Hi,

Thanks off all for the response.

2) Sorry for previous message it's working…. i was not able to find the file.. but now i could
confirm it's working

3) Yeah i agree… there's no problem within maven layout, it's great. But i would still prefer
the "choice" to use or not the "maven layout" instead to be forced to use…
A checkbox in the wizard "Use Maven Layout " would help….

4) As for the point 3) let the user to choice what a service task is… "A webservice", " A Java Class"
"An OSGi service"….

5) From technical point of view pool and lanes could be not important….
but for business analyst will be…. so hope to have these supported in future

Regards

Andrea

[patobe]

Another aspect of including pools and lanes in the actual process definition is that the business people will be able to recognize the process they specified with the modelling tool. If the the graphical layout, which hopefully will be included in some future release, is missing pools and lanes it can be an issue for the business people as well as users of any client displaying the graphical layout.

Regards
/Patrick

[andrea_zoppello]

Hi Patrick,

Yes the point within a BPMN Tools is that bpmn is mainly target to business analyst *not developers*.
At least this is my experience.

If you try to go to customers and try to give too much *technical detailed* tools, where for example you ask for java
classes, xpath expressions… and all of sort of this technical stuff you'll probably fail.

In my opinion the correct approcah is to give to users a tool, where a bpmn analyst coukld use bpmn to model
process that will contains both human task activisties, and service activities ( but without to bound to java for example ).

A business analyst really need to know that there are some services that could be composed, without to
worry about technical details ( if the service is a java class, a webservice… or any other stuff ).

Andrea

Another aspect of including pools and lanes in the actual process definition is that the business people will be able to recognize the process they specified with the modelling tool. If the the graphical layout, which hopefully will be included in some future release, is missing pools and lanes it can be an issue for the business people as well as users of any client displaying the graphical layout.

Regards
/Patrick

[trademak]

To my opinion Activiti supports the two different target users with two tools:

Business and process analysts –> Activiti Modeler
Designers and developers –> Activiti Designer

We will work on the integration between the two tools, which currently doesn't exist.
I'm really interested in your view on this.

Best regards,

Tijs

[andrea_zoppello]

Hi Tijs,

If you state that Activiti Designer is targeted to designers/developers the
choice made for the designer ( maven project structure,  java class file for service ) *definitely make sense*.

If i've understand well, you're thinking a scenario where a business analyst first use the Activiti Modeler, and then
the developers import this in the Designer to work at technical level on the processes.

From my point of view i would like to have the Activiti Designer to taget both the analyst and developer.
Maybe it could be helpfull to share with you which is the way i'm currently working with BPMN now.

1 ) First off all the analyst use an eclipse based designer ( the one provided by the eclipse project ).
At this point the analyst don't know about service details, java classes and othe technical stuff.

2 ) The developers could start from this using annotation to provide * technical details * on service
tasks…. and conditions on exclusive gateways for example…
Developers are free to add or remove task to the diagram if the technical drive require this.

Within this approach both users are using the same tool… there's no need to import/export beteween tools,
and each user could work on the process focusing on what he has to do…

Instead to see the "Designer" and "Modeler" tools seen as targeted to different users, i would still
prefer to have a vision where you would use the "Web ( Modeler )" version where you need collaborative
working capabilities and the "Eclipse version" where you would still want to have a desktop tool
based on eclipse.

I would like to have an "Eclipse Based" tools, but really need a complete tool that let me to start
from the analysis and end with the deployable processes.

I think that activiti designer is quite good even if it 's in beta, ant not far from what i need.

Two simple enhancements that would help are for example:

1) Let the user to choose the project strcuture layout ( not force a maven structure )
2) For service task ( let the user free to enter a generic service identifier, and let the translation
to this id to a java class, a webservice, an osgi service  as a detail, or let the user to choose….
The choice of a java class could stay there, but let the user to be more generic if he wants.. )

I'm saying this beacuse for example in my scenario…. service task in bpmn diagrams are services
registered within an OSGi container…..

A more complicated thing is the support of pool and lanes…

Hope this helps

Regards
Andrea

[patobe]

I can see 2 very useful use cases:

Use case 1

1. The business analyst creates the process model in the web based modelling tool (really useful with a web based modelling tool which doesn't need to be distributed within the organisation).
2. The business analyst stores the model artifacts with the web based life cycle management tool (again really useful to have a web based collaboration tool).
3. The process designer import the model into the eclipse designer.
4. The process designer flesh out the details with the help of any developers needed (could be involving developers from different diciplines depending on required integrations, connections to web services, etc.)
5. The process designer store the design artifacts in the life cycle management tool.
6. The process manager implements the process in the activiti runtime engine (using available deployment mechanisms)


Use case 2

1. The process manager analyzes the runtime data available form the activiti engine
2. The process manager sits down with the business analyst to improve the implemented process using the web based modeller
3. The business analyst/process manager updates model in the life cycle tool
4. The process designer imports the updated model in the eclipse designer to once again flesh out the details with the help of needed developers (in the phase it would be extremly useful to be able to merge the previous design with the updated model)
5. The process designer updates the design artifacts in the life cycle tool
6. The process manager deploys the updated process artifacts to the activiti runtime engine

The above use cases however has nothing to do with the need of pools and swimlanes in the eclipse designer. As I see it, pools and swimlanes are needed in the graphical representation created by the eclipse designer. This image can then be included in the deployment to the runtime engine and made available to any user of any client application. This could improve the user experience significantly by not only vizualing the process but also showing the progress, trails, remaining steps where and when the user will be involved in the process.

Regards
/Patrick

[trademak]

Hi Andrea and Patrick,

Thanks for the feedback.
Indeed I was thinking about the modeler being the business analyst tool and the designer being the developer tool. But I think you're right that ideally a business analyst must also be able to work with the designer if he/she would like a desktop tool.
I will think things through and see if we can implement the designer with a choice of project structure and an implementation free service task. The support of pools and lanes is already on our list.

Best regards,

Tijs

[andrea_zoppello]

Hi Tijs,

I'm very happy to hear you'll try to get our feedback.

I'm also interested to know more about the "Activiti Book" you've in progress. ( Not sure if this is the right thread to discuss
about ) but i've heard from twitter and i'm interested to buy an MEAP copy when it will be available.

Do you have any news about any date for a first MEAP availability???

Andrea