Roadblocks while learning Activiti BPM - Help!

[kunalsuri]

Hi Guys,

I am a new user to Activiti BPM ( 1 week Old) and I have got a bit lost while creating my first dummy process. I have tried to follow various tutorials that I could get my hands on but still have some issues!

I come from a background where we often research on workflows, BPM and SOA technologies and we currently use Eclipse Stardust BPM and JBoss Fuse ESB for majority of our work.

Recently, I was introduced to Activiti BPM and wanted to get myself well acquainted with the software as it looks nice

Thus, I would kindly request you to help me to remove my road blocks

My Problems:

1. I got confused between Activti BPM 5.17 and Alfresco Activiti BPM 1.2 :

I requested for a Trail version of Alfresco Activiti 1.2, installed it and try to run my Process.
I was able to create a simple the Step Process, provide interesting Forms in User/Manual Activities etc but I got lost once I started creating a BPMN diagram. Even after watching some demos I was not able to understand it.
I got error like users not defined and had no clue how to run/ deploy the BPMN process in the Alfresco engine? Or I am not sure even if we can deploy the BPMN process there?

2. I tried to use the Eclipse Activity Project and designer and saw some demo on creating a BPMN Process, Create the Deployment Artifacts (.bar file) and loading it to Activiti 5.17 , but this confused me further!

I)  Can I upload the BPMN Process only to Activity 5.17 (Activiti- Explore) ? Or even to Alfresco Activiti?

II) How to use a WSDL for a service task ?
Do I need to manually edit the BPMN2.0 xml file ?
I am not able to see any place in the designer where I can give the WSDL file and it will help to create a request -response atributes?
I just see the place for Java code!

I am sorry for this long question but it would be really useful for me to get more understanding of Activiti BPM.

Thus, could you please provide me some pointers or links to docucments/ videos where I can see end-to-end process created and executed on Activiti BPM or Alfresco Activiti 1.2

Thanks in Advance!
Kunal.

[jbarrez]

1.

> but I got lost once I started creating a BPMN diagram

I can imagine that, if you are starting from scratch. The Activiti user Guide describes all constructs of BPMN in detail: http://activiti.org/userguide/index.html#_getting_started_10_minute_tutorial

> I am not sure even if we can deploy the BPMN process there?

yes you can 😉 You need to create an App with that process model and publish it.

2. I. Yes and yes
II. That's already a whole new level of complexity. I would focus on the easy process bits

[kunalsuri]

Hi Activiti Team,

Thanks for the above links it was quite useful!

I was able to successfully create and execute a Process (Manual Task based) along with usage of Forms for each task.
I made use of the Enterprise Trial version of Alfresco Activiti 1.2 and it all went quite nice.

Now, I am trying to execute a simple process having lets say 3 task wherein,
1. Manual Task A (to input some value from User)
2. Call a web service (To pass the value - SOAP based Apache CXF service having a WSDL url)
3. Manual Task B (Show the returned value to the user)

The problem is I am not able to find the right technique to integrate the Url and use the webservice.

I have following questions:

1. I am missing something in Activiti BPM where I can just give the WSDL url somewhere in the Service Task and it automatically works Or is it that for the only way for now to work with Web services is to download the BPMN file from Enterprise version, put code in it, upload it and test it?
[Context] I have used some other BPM tools like Eclipse stardust and BizAgi (trial version) and there I just give the webservice Url and it works fine. Somehow I am also trying to see how easy Activiti BPM is for non-tech people.

2. In any case could you point me to any tutorial (doc or video) that could help to create this simple process.

Thanks for your time!
Kunal.

[jbarrez]

1. No, we don't support WSDL (yet). We're focussed on REST services as this is what our current customers are using.
If you need it, it would mean writing a custom Java service task currently.

[kunalsuri]

Do you have any docs for such java service task in Activiti that you could kindly point me to ?

[jbarrez]

Sure. Just look for 'Java service task' in the docs .. http://activiti.org/userguide/index.html#bpmnTask, 8.5.3. Java Service Task