Workflows

What is workflow?

The Workflow Management Coalition has developed a framework for the establishment of workflow standards. This framework includes five categories of interoperability and communication standards that will allow multiple workflow products to coexist and interoperate within a user's environment. More technical details are available in the WfMC following document Workflow Reference Model.

• Reference Model & Glossary

Specify a framework for workflow systems, identifying their characteristics, functions and interfaces. Development of standard terminology for workflow systems.

• Process Definition Tools Interface

Definition of a standard interface between process definition and modeling tools and the work flow engine(s).

• Workflow Client Application Interface

Definition of APIs for client applications to request services from the workflow engine to control the progression of processes, activities and work-items.

• Invoked Application Interface

A standard interface definition of APIs to allow the workflow engine to invoke a variety of applications, through common agent software.

• Workflow Interoperability Interface

Definition of workflow interoperability models and the corresponding standards to support interworking.

• Administration & Monitoring Tools Interface

The definition of monitoring and control functions.

• Conformance

To develop the Coalition's policy on product conformance against its specifications and agree an approach to vendor certification.

Supported Workflows

• Design and deploy your workflow
• Bonita
• JBPM
• How to deploy e Xo Workflow
• Workflow Publication Plugin

What is a workflow engine?

The second module in the stack is the workflow engine. A workflow engine, sometimes referred as a BPM (Business Process Management) engine, is a software component that breaks a work process down into tasks. A basic example of such a process is an approval workflow process, in which an employee needs a manager's permission before running an application. A workflow engine provides an infrastructure to model this workflow, execute it, assign the tasks to its participants , and monitor it. To achieve the desired results, it may interact with humans or machines through, for example, Web services. This enables integration with platforms different from Java, like mainframes or .NET.

Why merge eXo Portal with a Workflow Engine?

First, many organizations express the need to run a flexible and unique solution to interface with their back office. This solution includes business processes. On one side, as we have seen, we have eXo which is skilled at presentation, personalization and integration. On the other, Workflows stand out with automation, modeling and collaboration. A unique tool pools all these strengths and provides an answer to the organization's expectations. Employees or customers need to authenticate only once to access all resources. In addition, the common "look and feel" of the organization are commonly applied thanks to CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) skins in eXo.

Second, eXo ECM provides an infrastructure for content management. Documents are created by writers in the Portal, read over by proofreaders who plan the publication during a period of time. At the end, those documents must be archived. Workflows complement the solution devised by the eXo Platform to implement the flow of documents and organize the collaboration between humans. In exchange, eXo exposes its JCR and allows the workflow engine to invoke stored Groovy scripts or Business Rules during task executions.

Wofklow engine require a user interface layer to generate online forms when interacting with humans. eXo could put its UI functionality at disposal. eXo can also be combined with AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) to enrich the user's experience when Workflow forms are filled in.