On 29/10/2012 11:31, Martin van Es wrote: > Hi, > > Since my Syncope test instance is more or less doing what I wanted to test I > was interested in taking this to the next level and see what workflows could > do. I have experience creating Activiti workflows for Alfresco so I hoped to > apply this knowledge to Syncope a get a headstart. > > A couple of questions regarding workflows in Syncope: > > 1. As I see it right now, there is one governing workflow (for all users in > Syncope). Do I understand correctly that at the moment if I were to manage > two kinds of roles (students + employees e.g.) I would have to create one > workflow that forks into two main paths depending on main role and they would > be mutually explusive (unless the fork could instantiate two parallel > subprocesses).
Correct: the default workflow handler (ActivitiUserWorkflowAdapter) is working with a single workflow definition (e.g. a single XML). If you want handle this differently, you need to provide your own workflow handler - but this is of course not easy - see [1] for more information. > 2. In Alfresco a big part of workflow design is designing the accompanying > model and forms. How is that done in Syncope, where would I put my > models/forms, how and where will they be rendered (in Todo, like the Tasks in > Alfresco?). Forms are currently handled in the same XML as workflow definition, as per Activiti specification [2]. > 3. Alfresco supports "live" model and workflow deployment and updating to > ease development of workflows. I didn't find this in Syncope. Do I need to > restart Syncope for each change in model/workflow/form? Can I > restart the Activiti sub process? If so, how? There is no need to restart anything, just update the XML workflow via admin console [3] or RESTful method - for which we still lack a decent documentation :( > Is workflow support mature enough to start experimenting with or should I > wait a little? I was contemplating helping out on documentation if I were to > succeed in crafting a simple example from scratch including model and > interface. The current Activiti-based implementation is running successfully in some production environments AFAIK, even though the documentation is far from being complete [4]: as for anything else, there is always room for improvement, though... Regards. [1] https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/SYNCOPE/CustomWorkflowEngine [2] http://www.activiti.org/userguide/index.html#forms [3] https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/SYNCOPE/Customize+the+workflow+definition [4] https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/SYNCOPE-127 -- Francesco Chicchiriccò ASF Member, Apache Cocoon PMC and Apache Syncope PPMC Member http://people.apache.org/~ilgrosso/
