Alfresco has embedded jBPM

[alf_dave]

Hi jBPM developers and contributors,

For the last couple of months we've been embedding jBPM into Alfresco. We've found the quality of the jBPM code, documentation and examples to be very good and haven't really needed to use this forum too much! Excellent work.

The integration has involved:

1) Layering the Alfresco Web Client User Interface onto jBPM - this means using our own meta-data support to describe the data required by a process and each task and having that drive the Alfresco UI dialogs.
2) Encapsulating jBPM behind a service-oriented API - potentially allowing RMI or Web Service access.
3) Allowing jBPM process context and task variables to reference objects inside the Alfresco Content Repository - jBPM beanshell scripts can navigate the repository and perform operations (such as checkout,checkin,
transform).
4) Using Spring Modules to tie Alfresco & jBPM persistence and transactions
5) Hooking into various jBPM plug-in points such as Value Converters, Task Factory etc

I understand that work around task meta-data and task dialog rendering is taking place for 3.2. We'd be happy to share our experience in this area.

A preview of this integration will be available soon - some documentation can be found on our wiki at http://wiki.alfresco.com/wiki/Workflow.

Thanks.

David Caruana,
Alfresco

[kukeltje]

Hi David,

Congratulations on successfully integrating jBPM in Alfresco and thanks for the compliments. It is my opinion though that the knowledge bla...bla..bla.. ;-) of te people overthere at Alfresco is also for a large part the reason implementing this went so smoothly. One of the disadvantages of open source is that anyone can use it, resulting in questions like 'what is tools.jar'

Ok, back to the subject. I'm yealous on on the amount of documentation you guys produce, the quality of it and the openness in the decisionprocess. The combination of Alfresco as it is now, jBPM, WCM and Chiba is a realy powerful combination and as you guys describe it, a platform for higer-level applications like claims management. I've spoken to one of your sales people before during my day job, but we should certainly get in touch again.

2 small questions.
regarding 2), is it a jbi compliant spi?
regarding 3), did you use the converters to convert jsf ui fields to create properly typed process variables?

For sharing the info on the ui/task dialog rendering, use the design forum or send me a direct mail (I think you still have that).

Looking forward to the preview.

[koen.aers]

Hi David,

Also congratulations from my part. The more success stories about jBPM the better? I already heard many great things about your product, so I am convinced it will also be a success story...

Thanks,
Koen