Questions about history / audit / reporting on workflow

[piski]

Hi all,

Please answer some questions about workflows history and reporting, it may help somebody !

1) What's the best practice to get workflow / tasks history and reporting ?
MySQL query(ies) ?  (According to http://wiki.alfresco.com/wiki/Audit, definitely not against 3.4 because Audit trail architecture has changed a lot, so we have to use Web scripts or APIs) …
So, Audit trail activating can provide us all informations which we need or do we have to wait Activiti and the next Alfresco's release ?

2) In some post, I've "heard" that some informations are dropped at the end of workflow's life, is that true ? In the same way, informations are deleted from tables if a workflow is cancelled or the "status" is "canceled" ? (cf. http://forums.alfresco.com/en/viewtopic.php?f=35&t=26795 )

3) MySQL still provide us a way to make reporting against 3.4 ? (if true, can someone, who has a great knowledge of Alfresco relationship model, provide us an example or some starting point to look & query this feature ?)

4) I've read the whole page about Audit http://wiki.alfresco.com/wiki/Audit … but nothing about workflows ?

5) For Activiti, will these features be integrated or part of the tool ?

I don't know if it's wanted, or if Alfresco haven't yet the time for this, but I am very surprising that's workflow history and administration aren't not part of standard Alfresco, it's so very important for users and administrative people … maybe Enterprise version ?

Thanks for your help, I would like just answers to find the best and more accurate way, not only the solution (but if you have it, I take  :lol: ) !

[mehul1511]

Hey,

I see that you have not got any replies for this post. But I have exact the same question and have been breaking my head over it to get answers but nothing is working for me. I have read the audit wiki but as you have said even I was not able to find any solution. Since I have exact the same questions as you have over here, were you able to find answers to them. If so can you help me with your knowledge I have been working on this for days and have not got any results. Please help…………

Really appreciate it…

[piski]

Sorry but I'm still waiting a reply, even if it's "general".

We'll have a look on the last 3.4.e with Activiti preview to know if we can find a way to do this !

[mehul1511]

Thank you for your reply. If you find answers to it please reply back to this post. Really appreciate it

[mitpatoliya]

Hi,

I can comment on your second point and hope this will be help you out.

After completion of workflow workflow history still persist in the database.
It does not get deleted.
When you look in to the properties of document for workflow history you will find information only about inflight workflows.
But with little customization you can get the information about completed workflows as well.

[piski]

Hi,

Could you share with us the main "keys" to make the custiomizations required ?

Thanks !

[mrogers]

Workflows are indeed deleted when they are cancelled, Its just the way JBPM is.     I've just done some quick reading up on Activiti and it seems that history is stored so can be used for reports.

There's two ways of working around this that spring to mind.
1: is to store the information about workflow execution somewhere,  for example you could have some properties on the document to which the workflow runs e.g. "approved by" or store a log as content of a node somewhere.
2: is to store details of the workflow execution via audit and then report against that.

[mitpatoliya]

For Getting History of Completed workflows you can directly use the API's of WorkflowService.
    public List<WorkflowInstance> getWorkflowsForContent(NodeRef packageItem, boolean active)

where if you send active as false it will return you the List of workflow instances which are completed.
From which you can get the workflow task and history.

[mehul1511]

Thank you very much for your reply!

@mitpatoliya are you available on yahoo im? I had some quick questions!!

Regards

[krups]

Hi,
I am also after to store workflow histories. I am using activiti. I don't know much about audit. Can you please share someidea how can I achieve this?
Thanks