Using Alfresco for a BPM process

[konsultex]

I have Alfresco (2.1) in use for managing documentation for an engineering project and the company is very pleased with the solution. This company has a home grown ERP solution and now has a request to implement a process for approving purchase order payments which are not related to this particular projetct. In other words they would like to use Alfresco for other thisngs in the company. From what we saw so far this looks like a good fit for Alfresco but I have some questions about following this route or using a BPM solution that would integrate with Alfresco.

A short description of the process is that the company receives an invoice to pay. The user opens up the system (Alfresco is the candidate) and puts the paper in a scanner to capture the image. He them puts in details that identify this invoice in the ERP system (for example, the vendor id, project number, etc.). The expectation is that Alfresco would be able to show information from the ERP system relevant to approving this payment. The document would the go through a workflow and at the end the ERP system would be updated. I know that the ERP system will also have to be modified.

Some questions are:

a) regarding the scanner control, is Kofax the only solution?
b) in case the first step does not yet have a document, can a jBPM complex process be started in Alfresco without a document?

If we go this route, would we be forcing Alfresco to do things not planned for it?

Thanks.

[davidc]

a) regarding the scanner control, is Kofax the only solution?

I don't think so - I believe there may integrations for eCopy and Filemark.

b) in case the first step does not yet have a document, can a jBPM complex process be started in Alfresco without a document?

No.

If we go this route, would we be forcing Alfresco to do things not planned for it?

Don't think so, although customisation is required for ERP integration etc

[joserra]

b) in case the first step does not yet have a document, can a jBPM complex process be started in Alfresco without a document?

No.

We may have the same problem. We have processes based on documents, and others not. if the process is started with alfresco, can we access the full API of jBPM? should we create processes in different ways if they hve documents or not?

[konsultex]

David;

Thanks for the answers. I have a follow up question to the scanner. I just want to start the scanner from the Alfresco web client and see the image before saving. Is this impossible, difficult or easy to do without a package like eCopy or Kofax?

[davidc]

We may have the same problem. We have processes based on documents, and others not. if the process is started with alfresco, can we access the full API of jBPM? should we create processes in different ways if they hve documents or not?

The UI in 2.1 community does not allow the start of a workflow without docs.  However, the workflow service does allow this.

A fix has been made recently to allow a custom Web Client action to launch a workflow without docs.  See http://forums.alfresco.com/viewtopic.php?p=26684