Recommendations for workflow with rules in 6.2 EE

[6年前 に Chris Maggiulli によって更新されました。]

I am tasked with implementing workflow inside one of our more complex MVC Portlet's in our 6.2 EE environment. I have been looking at Kaleo but I am disappointed that I need to write an extension in order to create custom statuses. Additionally I would like to implement a rules engine inside to work with the workflow engine but I don't really see any way to do that with Kaleo.

Can anyone suggest a rules and workflow engine that I can use with a MVC Portlet's on 6.2 EE. If that doesn't exist can anyone recommend a DXP solution? We might be willing to upgrade if need be.

Also any documentation regarding either the workflow or rules engine and it's integration with liferay would be super.

Thanks

[6年前 に David H Nebinger によって更新されました。]

Chris Maggiulli:

I am tasked with implementing workflow inside one of our more complex MVC Portlet's in our 6.2 EE environment. I have been looking at Kaleo but I am disappointed that I need to write an extension in order to create custom statuses. Additionally I would like to implement a rules engine inside to work with the workflow engine but I don't really see any way to do that with Kaleo.

If you think you need additional statuses, I believe you are using workflow incorrectly. I mean, the status codes themselves are just for Liferay to determine if something is pending or approved or rejected, it is not for you to "track" what has been completed so far.

So if you are thinking you need to define your own status codes and somehow hack the knowledge into Liferay so it will do the right things, you're already on a path to failure which hopefully we can avert soon.

Instead of trying to hack your own thing in, perhaps you can share with what you need to do and we can help show how it can be accomplished within workflow as it currently exists.








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[6年前 に Chris Maggiulli によって更新されました。]

Basically we have a search container on a page that is populated with "orders" (a custom entity) depending on what status they are in. We have about 15 different statuses that tracks a sales order from entry (in our eCommerce system which creates a record in our Liferay portlet) to production (when its actually done being produced). In between there we have a ton of different "statuses" (such as in processing, in design, engineered, on production floor, on hold, etc). We would like to track those statuses in workflow.

The current status of our "order" depends on what "queue" it shwos up in (basically a queue is a search container that is accessible to a given department). We have most of this done with programmatic logic but want to bring it into a workflow engine. Basically "approved", "rejected" etc doesn't even begin to touch the granularity we use in our workflow because of the nature of the manufacturing/engineering we do.

Are we thinking about this wrong? Are you suggesting we try and modify our business processs flow to fit the kaleo statuses or are we just conceptually thinking about workflow completely wrong?

[6年前 に David H Nebinger によって更新されました。]

Chris Maggiulli:

Are we thinking about this wrong? Are you suggesting we try and modify our business processs flow to fit the kaleo statuses or are we just conceptually thinking about workflow completely wrong?

Only slightly.

I mean your "order" does have a number of real business statuses, and those have true value to your organization. That said, they are not "workflow" statuses.

I'm sure you've seen some complex Kaleo graphs, the entity goes in one side, can navigate from step to step to step, sometimes forking, sometimes joining, but traveling on a path from start to finish. The workflow statuses represent the state of the entity inside of the workflow engine itself.

As I said, your statuses are valid and you definitely want to track the transition as the entities go through the workflow, but you will track them separately from the workflow statuses. You can add your custom status column to your entity and, at each point in the workflow you can get your status from the entity and make decisions on it (for forking or routing), you can update it, etc.











Come meet me at 2017 LSNA!

[6年前 に Chris Maggiulli によって更新されました。]

Interesting thank you for your response. I didn't realize that workflow status and business statuses are meant to be different. Much appreciated!

[6年前 に David H Nebinger によって更新されました。]

Yeah, I mean the Kaleo workflow engine is keyed around the workflow statuses, states and transitions. You can't really expect to just add new values and not throw the engine out of whack.

Keeping them separate will allow you to make choices based on your own status values yet still keep the engine spinning like a top.












Come meet me at 2017 LSNA!