jBPM empowers Magnolia CMS

Maciej reported in his blog that Magnolia CMS uses jBPM 5 as their default work flow engine in version 5.

Just two weeks ago I had a pleasure to talk about jBPM (both v5 and v6) at Magnolia conference in Basel, Switzerland. This was a great event that I recommend everyone that is interested in CMS.

Together with Espen from Magnolia team, we made a really nice presentation about both jBPM and Magnolia Workflow that utilizes jBPM.

Here you can find the presentation:

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.).

Vote for JBoss Community Recognition Awards !

Voting for the JBoss Community Recognition Awards is now open !

Each year, we ask the JBoss project leads to nominate contributors that they feel have make significant and leading contributions to the JBoss.org Community over the past year. It’s that time again, and those nominations are now complete - so let the voting begin!

We have added a new category this year, “Community Leadership,” so the categories are now:

• Community Leadership
• New features
• Bug fixes
• Issue/JIRA
• Wiki
• Documentation

Several key jBPM community contributors were nominated this year, so your help on giving them the recognition they deserve would really be appreciated !

So please go and vote now !

I would personally like to thank everyone that contributed (in one way or the other) in the last year already.  You all deserve an award ! :-) 

• Bug Fixes:
  
  
• Esteban Aliverti - Esteban has shown tireless commitment to improving the overall quality of the project. From testing edge scenarios to fixing high profile bugs, no part of the code is out of his reach: fixing bugs from the core engine to the web tooling, Esteban has left his mark and helped improve the code for the benefit of the whole community.

•  Community Leadership
  
• Demian Calcaprina - Demian is a very active jBPM Community Member, as he's helping on the forums, reporting issues, etc.  He is also very active testing new releases and reporting back with suggestions and improvements.
  
  He was accepted for Google Summer of Code 2012, where he worked on extending the jBPM human task service with a pluggable life cycle (which a task goes through, from creation through claiming and starting all the way through completing, etc.) using a business process, executed by jBPM core engine. 
  
  Demian is currently working as a Software Engineer at Viridian, but he is also offering freelance consulting services on Drools and jBPM.
     

•  New Features
  
• Mariano de Maio - Mariano is a very active community member who is always helping both in the community channels and on his own blog: http://marianbuenosayres.wordpress.com
  
  He is a Drools & jBPM Consultant who has contributed with the Infinispan and Drools integration and with the jBPM Form Builder. He has also reported and helped fix several bugs in the Drools and jBPM source code, providing comprehensive test suites. Mariano is now helping with the development of several components of the new jBPM Console NG.
  
• Saiful Omar - Saiful has been promoting and using jBPM in his academic research, which focuses on Process Adaptation and Compliance. He has published various papers where he describes an adaptive compliance workflow management system built on top of jBPM. 
  
  Saiful has been contributing to the jBPM Designer (i.e. a web-based process designer) with important features like:
  
  (1) Locking and Unlocking feature - this feature allows users of jBPM Designer to lock certain parts of the business process model in order to foster collaboration during the modelling phase of BPM. Locked parts of the model could be seen as ""feature complete"" and unlocked onces are what needs to be finished. Locked nodes can easily be unlocked as well if needed.
  
  (2) Microsoft Academic Search Service Node - the first community contributed jBPM service node definition and implementation. It allows users to easily add the Microsoft Search feature into their business processes. This contribution has been added to the jBPM community service node repository.

Drools & jBPM Walk in center @ Red Hat Summit (free and open for everyone)

There's a FREE opportunity if you are in the Boston area next week on Thursday.  A lot of us will be there for JUDCon and Red Hat Summit and we want to give you the opportunity to come and ask questions.

We have a dedicated room for community members to come and chat. The room should be open to all, not just those with Summit passes, although you'll need to tell security where you are going.  So whether you're already coming to Summit, or in the vicinity and want to join us, don't hesitate.

Day: Thursday, June 13th, 2013
Location: Boston, Hynes Convention Centre, Hynes Room 110

Time: 09.30 to 17.00

There will be chairs and tables, so you can spend as long as you like.  Mark Proctor, Edson Tirelli, Pedro Zapata and myself will be there all day, with probably other people dropping in as well.  No question too small, no task too big :) We can help you getting everything installed, give some mentoring on your current projects, or help you dive deep into Drools or jBPM code.

Feel free to drop in with quick questions on how to do something, or to check you're doing it right, or generic questions about Drools & jBPM itself, about the roadmap, etc.  There will be chairs and tables, so you can stay longer and hang out and code :)

Preparing for JUDCon + Red Hat Summit in Boston

A yearly visit to Boston has become a tradition it seems, I'll be attending the JUDCon Boston 2013 and the Red Hat Summit 2013 events next week !

JUDCon is the conference by and for developers, and it's an ideal place to get an overview of what's to come in the various projects, have a chat with the core developers or just grab some beers and have some fun ;)

I'll be presenting "What's new in jBPM6" on Tuesday ...

Business Process Management (BPM) is changing, and so is the jBPM project! It's no longer a tool used by developers to implement some low-level business logic, but it has evolved to a service offered to business analysts, developers and even end users to model, manage and monitor their business processes.
jBPM6 has a lot improvements in this area, and in this session we would like to take you through the most important ones. We will demonstrate the new web-based user interface, but also dive deeper into some technical improvements (like for example how we've simplified session and task service management, how to build your processes and how to scale your application).

... but do check out the agenda for a lot more interesting talks !

Red Hat Summit is the yearly Red Hat conference, to showcase the latest and greatest in cloud computing, platform, virtualization, middleware, storage, and systems management technologies.  There's a huge amount of sessions, in a very large spectrum of topics.

I'll be presenting "" on Friday, together with Pedro Zapata ...

Business environments are complex. To run an efficient and effective organization in today’s world, business users need to be able to clearly analyze and understand business activities, model repeatable processes, and have clear visibility into process executions. And to be able to effectively interface with the system, business users need convenient tools. JBoss jBPM 6, a JBoss Community project, is set in that direction, built with sophisticated tools to empower business users.
In this session, Kris Verlaenen and Pedro Zapata Fernandez will discuss the state of these tools in JBoss jBPM and discuss the Polymita tools that are now part of jBPM 6. They will also demonstrate the:

• Improved process modeling, covering process design, form design, and data modeling
• New dashboard builder used to create rich KPI reports and graphs
• Redesigned task management and process monitoring interface
• New process analysis and simulation tools

 ... but there are a lot more BPM-related sessions and workshops to enjoy !

It's not too late to register, so don't miss this opportunity !  I hope to see you all there and discuss whatever is on your mind.