Reminder: jBPM5 Webinar Feb 24th

Just a reminder that there will be a jBPM5 webinar tomorrow, Februari 24th.

You can choose one of these two live events:

• 9am EST (GMT-5 New York) / 14:00 GMT / 3pm CET (GMT+1 Paris)
• 2pm EST (GMT-5 New York) / 19:00 GMT / 8pm CET (GMT+1 Paris)

So register now !

An executable process using the designer

Tihomir has been working on the designer lately to make sure that the web-based process designer can be used to create executable processes from scratch using the designer only.

He has created a nice screencast and blogged about it:

"Here is an example of creating and executing a simple BPMN2 process created with the Oryx designer (click on the screenshot below). It shows off the ability to create both business rules and BPMN2 processes in the same environment and expose them to the client application that consume them.











In order to recreate this example, you must use the latest version of the Oryx designer which you can download from here (rename it to designer.war and replace your existing one in $jbossHome/server/$config/deploy directory). If you prefer to use the jbpm-console for executing the process instead of from Eclipse like shown in the example, you can do that as well if you define the process as part of the defaultPackage (or update your jbpm-console configuration to load processes from another package)."

The jBPM team is looking to hire !

With the first jBPM5 release out there, the work isn't done! We have lots of existing customers that need support or are eager to move to the new version and need some assistance. On top of that, we obviously want to keep improving and extending our latest version with new and exciting features.

That's why we are looking for someone who is willing to take on the challenge and join the team ! No need anymore to find some spare time to do contributions to jBPM, now you can do it fulltime.

Are you looking for something new and exciting and do you have what it takes? Previous experience with jBPM, BPM in general or open-source is a plus ;) Are you interested in joining the jBPM team to solve issues and add new features? Let us know !

Webinar on jBPM5: it's demo time !

With the release of jBPM 5.0 also come new presentations. And this time, I'll be doing a runthrough of the different tools, so you can get a feeling of what the different tools look like and see them in action.

The webinar will be on February, 24th and there will be two slots available, to make sure there is something that fits your time zone.

Don't miss this and register now !

If you're looking for a more technical overview of jBPM5, you can still take a look at the recorded version of the previous webinar.

jBPM 5.0 released

The jBPM team is pleased to announce the release of jBPM5!

jBPM is a Business Process Management (BPM) system, allowing you to specify, execute and manage your business processes, for both developers and business users. The jBPM core is a solid, lightweight engine that can be embedded inside your application or deployed as a service.



The most important features of the jBPM 5.0 release are:

• a core engine supporting native execution of business processes following the latest BPMN 2.0 specification

• powerful Eclipse tooling for developers, allowing creation, advanced debugging and deployment of your processes

• a process repository (with web-based UI) for managing your process definitions

• web-based tooling for business users including web-based editing of your business processes, a process management console, human task lists, etc.

jBPM 5.0 is one of the most powerful engines out there (already supporting a large set of constructs as defined in the BPMN2 specification), not only does it allow dynamic adaptations and migration, but it also supports flexible and adaptive processes.

Last, but not least, jBPM5 is not an isolated process engine but it can also be used as one of the component inside a much larger solution. If your real-life business problem for example has to deal with flexibility, events or is data-driven, we allow powerful integration with business rules, event processing and other services in your environment. This allows you to select how to model (each part of) your business knowledge, effectively combining these different paradigms into one solution.

To get you started, are you looking for some screenshots or screencasts? Or want to start browsing the documentation? Or you really want the hands-on experience? Then try out the (full) installer and run the ant script to set up a demo environment, that will guide you through a few of the components using a simple example. The installation chapter in the documentation contains a few screencasts to help you out. After that, you can continue reading the documentation, play with the example by modifying it, or start your own project.

And here are the links:

• Download the artefacts
• Latest documentation
• jBPM homepage
  

Got any questions? Try

IRC: #jbpm at irc.codehaus.org
Email: jbpm-dev@lists.jboss.org
jBPM User Forum

Getting started with jBPM5

With the release of jBPM 5.0 around the corner, lots of people are very eager to start using it. And luckily for us, they are willing to share their experience, so that other might be able to benefit as well. So here are some blogs you might find interesting if you're getting started as well.

Vignesh has kindly created a "Getting started with jBPM 5" video. He's put it up on his blog here.

"I once wrote a blog on setting up jBPM 3 with jBoss ESB which proved useful to lot of folks. Now I am going to present a similar one for the all-new jBPM5. There is indeed a huge difference between the two and I must admit that the new product stack is looking very good, loaded with many must-have options any BPM product should ship with.
I will write about all the technical insights in a separate post. One good news you should know is that the installation has got a lot easier in this version. Let's just get started with jBPM 5, install it, and see it for ourselves."

The guys at Plugtree have also created a tutorial that helps you create a process that includes variables, constraints, etc.

"This posts aims to teach the basics of modelling your processes into JBPM5. You’ll learn how to use the builtin Eclipse editor to create simple processes, with branching, joining, external variables and code constraints."

Looking for even more? Here's a post that groups a number of posts, videos and tutorials about jBPM5.

Enjoy !

A process repository using Guvnor

One of the missing pieces in the jBPM 5.0 CR1 release was the inclusion of a process repository. Luckily, your waiting time is over!

A process repository is an important part of your BPM architecture if you start using more and more business processes in your applications and especially if you want to have the ability to dynamically update them. The process repository is the location where you store and manage your business processes. Because they are not deployed as part of your application, they have their own life cycle, meaning you can update your business processes dynamically, without having to change the application code.

Note that a process repository is a lot more than simply a database to store your process definitions. It almost acts as a combination of a source code management system, content management system, collaboration suite and development and testing environment. These are the kind of features you can expect from a process repository:

• Persistent storage of your processes so the latest version can always easily be accessed from anywhere, including versioning
• Build and deploy selected processes
  
• User-friendly (web-based) interface to manage, update and deploy your processes (targeted to business users, not just developers)
  
• Authentication / authorization to make sure only people that have the right role can see and/or edit your processes
• Categorization and searching
  
• Scenario testing to make sure you don't break anything when you change your process
  
• Collaboration and other social features like comments, notifications on change, etc.
  
• Synchronization with your development environment

Actually, it would be better to talk about a knowledge repository, as the repository will not only store your process definitions, but possibly also other related artefacts like task forms, your domain model, associated business rules, etc. Luckily, we don't have to reinvent the wheel for this, as the Guvnor project acts as a generic knowledge repository to store any type of artefacts and already supports most of these features.

The following screencast shows how you can upload your process definition to Guvnor, along with the process form (that is used when you try to start a new instance of that process to collect the necessary data), task forms (for the human tasks inside the process), and the process image (that can be annotated to show runtime progress). The jbpm-console is configured to get all this information from Guvnor whenever necessary and show them in the console.


If you use the latest snapshot version of the jbpm-installer, that should automatically download and install the latest snapshot of Guvnor as well. So simply deploy your assets (for example using the Guvnor Eclipse integration as shown in the screencast, also automatically installed) to Guvnor (taking some naming conventions into account, as explained below), build the package and start up the console.

The current integration with the jbpm-console uses the following naming conventions to find the artefacts it needs (though we hope to update this to something more flexible in the near future):

• All artefacts should be deployed to the "defaultPackage" on Guvnor (as that is where the jbpm-console will be looking)
• A process should define "defaultPackage" as the package name (otherwise you won't be able to build your package on Guvnor)
  
• Task forms that should be associated with a specific process definition should have the name "{processDefinitionId}.ftl"
• Task forms for a specific human task should have the name "{taskName}.ftl"
• The process diagram for a specific process should have the name "{processDefinitionId}-image.png"

If you follow these rules, your processes, forms and images should show up without any issues in the jbpm-console.