Complex forms in jbpm?

[neotello]

Complex forms in jbpm?

Hi everybody, i'm new in the JBPM world and i must to evaluate if JBPM is valid to my need. I hope that someone can help me. First at all i will explain that i want to do.

I want to build a BPM environment that can have integration with another aplications. I will use the BPM console to process the workflow defined, but i need to show information in the formularies that come from another apps. I must to obtain this information through web services call. I have a client java that can obtain all the information that i will need.

Well with this requeriments i have the next doubts:

* Can i make my own connectors to obtain information that show in the formularies?

* Can i make formularies with complex elements like tables, etc?

* Is dificult modify the JBPM cosole to customize it?

* Is posible add new components to the formulary tool? for example, add a new input text with auto-complete or a table that, by default, get datas from my own connector

I will need to develop a lot a customize many aspect of the BPM. In general, is dificult the development in a JBPM environment?

Well thanks a lot for your time!

[krisverlaenen]

I believe you have different options:

(1) Using the remote APIs (REST, JMS, Java and soon WS) you can implement your own forms, using whatever technology you prefer, and simply get all the information you need at the start and complete the task at the end using the already available remote operations

(2) Extend the form modeler for any functionality that is not yet available: a developer could improve / extend the form modeler to support additional elements.  This will require some technical insight into how it works, but if you're interested in possibly contributing some of your enhancements to the project, the developers will try to help you with this.

(3) As an alternative to the form modeler, you can also use freemarker templates, these are html templates.

[neotello]

Thanks for your answer Kris,

I prefer to have all forms in the jbpm console, and use this console to work with the process. For this i will investigate about the last two options. My user tasks will get info from external app using REST, i think that this will be easy, is true?

We have a good level in Java development, but don't have experience in jbpm. What alternative (2 or 3) do you suggest to my to use? is there some documentation about this solutions?

And the last question, is posible to use JQuery using the freemaker template? i think that will be possible, but do you know some problem with this?

Thanks a lot!!

PD: I will continue reading the jbpm documentation.

[krisverlaenen]

When using solution (1), your forms will get the information through REST.  When using (2) or (3), they will automatically be injected into the form for you, so you don't have to worry about that in that case.

It seems it might be best to try out (3) first, as this won't require any deep knowledge into how the form modeler itself works (although this means you won't be able to use the form modeler then, you'll use much lower-level html templates created by developers for all your forms instead).

Afaik, using JS libraries inside these templates should be possible.

[anishtg]

On version 6.0.1

Option 3 (FTL Forms) - JS functions don't work in FTL forms (option 3) - JIRA issue JBPM-4280

Option 2 (form modeler) - Still haven't figured out how to even populate a drop down using data from java classes or any dynamic source. Nothing in the documentation or community. In case it's available, please point out to me. Otherwise, only option 1 will work.