jBPM6 Showcase: web-based jBPM console

This blog is part of a series showcasing jBPM6.  The goal of this blog is to introduce the jBPM console.

The jBPM console, our web-based management console (where you can start new process instances, complete your task list, etc.) has been redesigned completely.  There is now one web application supporting you through the entire life cycle of your business processes (and possibly other artefacts like your data models, forms, business rules, etc.).

 

 

The life cycle starts by authoring your business processes and deploying them.  You can also manage your process running process instances (or start new ones) and manage your task list.  Finally, dashboards can give you an overview of the entire system, where you can drill down into the details whenever necessary.

 

The following screencast gives you a quick overview of how to get started and run your first process.  Click on the image below to watch the screencast.

 

 

 

If you have used the jBPM installer to set up and start your environment on your local file system (see jBPM6 Showcase: getting started with the jBPM installer), you can try the same yourself! Simply navigate to http://localhost:8080/jbpm-console and log in using krisv/krisv.  This screencast uses one of the sample projects that are provided out-of-the-box as part of the jBPM playground repository (a repository that contains various sample projects that is automatically installed locally by the jBPM installer for you to play with). 

 

It uses a simple Evaluation process where a user can start a performance evaluation, where he first needs to perform a self-evaluation (which will show up as a task on his task list), after which his project manager and his human resource manager need to perform a similar evaluation.

 

The tooling is based on UberFire, which provides a configurable and pluggable web-based workspace.

What to do if I encounter problems or have questions?

 

You can always contact the jBPM community for assistance:

• IRC channel #jbpm at chat.freenode.net (you can use http://webchat.freenode.net)
• jBPM User Forum
• JIRA for bugs and feature requests

jBPM6 Showcase: getting started with the jBPM installer

This blog is part of a series showcasing jBPM6.  The goal of this blog is to help you downloading, installing and running the jbpm-installer, which will help you installing a demo setup (including the core engine, the web console, the eclipse tooling, etc.) on your local machine.

 

Step1: Download the installer

 

First of all, you need to download the installer. There are two versions, a full installer (which already contains a lot of the dependencies that are necessary during the installation) and a minimal installer (which only contains the installer and will download all dependencies). In general, it is probably best to download the full installer: jBPM-{version}-installer-full.zip

 

Step 2: Installation

 

The installer creates a demo setup, which includes the core engine, the web console (deployed on JBoss AS7), the eclipse tooling, etc.  It also contains a small example that you can use to run through each of the components.

Note: This install script assumes you have Java JDK 1.6+ (set as JAVA_HOME), and Apache Ant 1.7+ installed. If you don't, use the following links to download and install Java and/or Apache Ant.

The easiest way to get started is to simply run the installation script to install the entire demo setup.  Open a command prompt, go into the install folder where you unzipped the installer and run the following command:

 

ant install.demo

 

This will:

• Install JBoss AS7
• Download Eclipse
• Install jbpm-console war into AS
• Install the Drools & jBPM Eclipse plugin
• Install the Eclipse BPMN2 Modeler

 

When you run the installer for the first time, this could take some time (we are downloading an Eclipse installation specifically for your OS), so go and grab a cup of coffee now ;)

Note: The install script also allows you to use JBoss EAP 6.1 instead of  JBoss AS7, install the Eclipse plugins into an existing Eclipse installation, change the persistence configuration or authentication and authorization, etc. but that is outside the scope of this showcase.

Step 3: Starting up

Once the demo setup has finished, you can start playing with the various components by starting the demo setup:

ant start.demo

 

This will:

• Start the H2 database (which is used by default for storing all runtime information)
• Start the AS
• Start Eclipse

 

If everything went smoothly, your Eclipse application should have started up, and you should be able to open the web console by opening your web browser and navigating to:

http://localhost:8080/jbpm-console

Note that it could take a minute to start up the AS and web application.  If the web page doesn't show up after a while, make sure you don't have a firewall blocking that port, or another application already using the port 8080.  You can always take a look at the server log jbpm-installer/jboss-as-7.1.1.Final/standalone/log/server.log

In one of my next showcase blogs, I'll show you how to get started with the web application and Eclipse tooling.

 

If you also want to try out the dashboard builder (a monitoring web application to visualizate, customize and/or create various dashboards, reports and charts), with some default charts for monitoring your process instances, now execute (which will deploy the application so you can access it through the links in the jbpm-console):

 

ant install.dashboard.into.jboss

 

When you're done playing, simply close the Eclipse application, and run the following command to shut down the AS and H2 database:

 

ant stop.demo

 

What to do if I encounter problems or have questions?

 

You can always contact the jBPM community for assistance:

• IRC channel #jbpm at chat.freenode.net (you can use http://webchat.freenode.net)
• jBPM User Forum
• JIRA for bugs and feature requests

jBPM 6.0.0.CR2 available

We just put out our second release candidate for the jBPM 6.0 release.  All the components are feature complete and we're working on solving the last remaining issues.  So now is a good time to check out what's coming and give feedback on some of the new features or issues you may encounter.

 

You can download the (full) installer from the download pages or get the artefacts from the JBoss Maven repo.

 

The getting started documentation should help you running the installer and starting your first process in the jBPM web console and/or Eclipse tools.

 

To highlight some of the new features and components, I'll start doing regular blogs showcasing a particular component, feature, example, etc. in the next few weeks!

 

 

Like for example:

• getting started with the jbpm-installer
• web-based jBPM console (for managing process instances and tasks)
• the improved jbpm-designer (for modeling and simulating your business processes)
• the graphical form modeler (for creating human task and process forms)
• the data modeler (for creating data models)
• the Guvnor workbench (for building and deploying)
• the dashboard builder (for monitoring, dashboards and charts)
• the remote apis (REST, JMS, Java client)
• the updated Eclipse plugins

 In case you have any questions or feedback, you can contact us through the usual channels (irc, forum, JIRA, etc.).