Integrates Activiti BPM Engine in XWiki

Description

General Architecture

The application consists of 6 Maven modules:

• application-activiti-api
• application-activiti-bridge
• application-activiti-listener
• application-activiti-test
• application-activiti-ui

application-activiti-api

This is the CORE module which contains the Java API and the ScriptService API. It is responsable for:

• Starting the Activiti Engine
• Maps XWiki users into Activiti users. It has a custom Identity Service which replaces Activiti's default one.
• Inject the XWiki Script Services into the Activiti Engine so Activiti can call XWiki's services from its engine
• Expose Java API and Script Service API which can be called from Velocity or other XWiki Components which want to interact with Activiti

application-activiti-bridge

It is a component which has the role to create a bridge between Activiti and XWiki's Old Core/ legacy code. This has been created as a best practice. For more information please visit Writing XWiki Components page.

application-activiti-listener

It is a Component used for listening events which happen in XWiki, mostly DocumentCreated, DocumentUpdated events. It offers a way to send signals toprocesses deployed  into Activiti Engine which are listening for external events.

application-activiti-test

Tests for the application

application-activiti-ui

The front-end of the application. It contains:

a dedicated section in the Administration for managing and seing the global status of the deployed processes and their running instances

User Guide

Admin Guide

As seen in the installation guide, administration of the application is integrated within XWiki's Administration interface, and consists of 3 sections:

Activiti Repository

This section is responsible for displaying the deployed process definitions and various informations about them, like process definition version, process definition key, process definition ID, process definition description.

Also, deploying a new process definition can be achieved by uploading a BPMN 2.0 file from this page.

Activiti Runtime

This section is responsible for displaying informations about the running process instances. It also displays information about the Active tasks, current assignee, but also about the history of the completed processes or tasks.

Activiti Event Mapping

This section is responsible for managing the listeners mapped to Activiti. This is used to send signals to the Activiti Engine, thus to the listening processes, when a certain action happens within XWiki. It listens on 3 diferend XWiki events: Document Created, Document Deleted and Document Updated.

Regular User Guide

Normal users can access their interface of the Activiti application from the Applications panel. There, they will see all their assigned tasks or start processes.

Creating a process

Modelling the Activiti process

In order to create the model of the process, you must install the Activiti BPMN Eclipse Plugin. The installation guide and the user manual can be found on the Activiti homepage.

Besides the supported form types supported by Activiti, the current implementation adds 3 more:

• textArea (Custom implementation for displaying textareas which has String as backend)
• XWikiDocumentReference used for generating URL's from a XWiki EntityReference for an XWiki Document
• XWikiUsernameReference used for generating URL's from a XWiki EntityReference for an XWiki username

Sample process definitions

In order to use them, you simply have to upload the *.bpmn file into the application from the Administration Repository section. No build is necessary. If you want to play with the process definitions, you can open them using the Eclipse plugin.

Building from sources

To build from sources locally, you need to have the XWiki repositories added in your settings.xml file. To achieve this, please follow the instructions found on Building XWiki from sources.
Besides that, you also need to add the Activiti's repository to the settings.xml file:

Known limitations or issues

• The current implementation uses H2 as a database to store Activiti's database
• The current implementation does not support multiwiki environments. Meaning, all the deployed processes are shared across the whole XWiki farm. Install the XWiki activiti xar file in the main wiki AND in the local wiki where you want to use it. It has never been fully tested on a XEM Environment.
• No internationalization

Prerequisites & Installation Instructions

Manual Installation

• First, download the sources and build locally, or download directly the artefacts from the Maven repository, or get the artefacts from this attachment
• Copy the project jars to the lib directory of the XWiki webapp
  • xwiki-activiti-api-*.jar
  • xwiki-activiti-bridge-*.jar
  • xwiki-activiti-listener-*.jar
• Since the project jars depend on Activiti, you have to copy Activiti jar and its dependencies in the same directory:
  • activiti-engine-*.jar
  • activiti-bpmn-model-*.jar
  • activiti-bpmn-converter-*.jar
  • com.h2database:h2-*.jar (currently the integration uses H2 database for storing Activiti Engine Database)
  • org.mybatis:mybatis-*.jar (need by Activiti to be able to use the H2 database)
  • org.springframework.spring-core:spring-core-*.jar
  • org.springframework.spring-beans:spring-beans-*.jar
  • org.springframework.spring-asm:spring-asm-*.jar
    

• You can start the XWiki server and now, login with an user which has administration privileges and import the xwiki-activiti-ui.xar (downloaded from the Download button on this page or build from the sources) from the Administration section.
• Now you should see 3 entries in the Administration Application
  • Activiti Event Mapping
  • Activiti Repository
  • Activiti Runtime

• This means that everything is OK, the Activiti Engine has been initialized and you're ready to deploy a process definition.

Automatic installation with Extension Manager

Release Notes

v1.0

First Release. Please  check documentation for more informations.

Dependencies

Dependencies for this extension (org.xwiki.contrib:application-activiti-ui 1.0):

• org.xwiki.contrib:application-activiti-api 1.0
• org.xwiki.contrib:application-activiti-bridge 1.0
• org.xwiki.contrib:application-activiti-listener 1.0