This document introduces the Activiti workflow and business process management platform. It provides an overview of key features including being a lightweight BPMN 2.0 engine that can be embedded in Java applications. It also highlights the Activiti modeler, explorer and other tools, as well as its community and ecosystem. The document demonstrates how Activiti can be used to model and execute a sample mortgage approval process.

1. Activiti in Action
Tom Baeyens & Joram Barrez
Alfresco
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2. Last year…
• We talked about jBPM
• JBoss
• Things change
• BPMN 2.0
• Consolidating efforts
• Liberal license required
• Alfresco
• Warm heart
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3. 3

4.  ECM + BPM
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5. BPMN 2.0
• OMG standard
– Shapes
– Execution
semantics
– File format
• Membership
• First pure play BPM standard
• General endorsement
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6. Activiti In Evolution
DSLs
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7. Activiti & Java
• Out-of-the-box
– Control flow
– Functional
activity types
– Everything you
exect in a
typical
BPM System
• But…
– Not limited to out of the box
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8. Activiti is an Embeddable Process Engine
Any .jar
Java
Environment
Oracle || MySQL || PostgreSQL || Any DB…
Processes Executions History
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Your Domain Tables

9. Activiti Embeds In Your App
• Embeds in
• Your database
• Your transaction
• Your domain model
• Your tests
• Your Spring configuration
Tomcat Activiti Your
JDK 5 App
JBoss Spring Oracle, MySQL, PostgreSQL
…
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10. Community
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11. Community
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12. Last year…
jBPM 3
jBPM 4
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13. Today
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14. What do you get?
• World-class rock-solid BPM and workflow engine
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15. Not only the engine?
Activiti
Activiti Java Applications
Java Applications
Modeler
Modeler
Activiti
Activiti
Designer
Designer
Activiti
Activiti
Activiti
Activiti
Probe
Probe
Engine
Engine
Activiti
Activiti
Explorer
Explorer
Activiti
Activiti REST interface
REST interface
Cycle
Cycle
iPhone
iPhone Android
Android
Explorer
Explorer Explorer
Explorer
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16. Activiti Modeler
• Webbased BPMN 2.0 graphical editor
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17. Activiti Explorer
• Task management
• Process instance inspection, reporting
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18. Activiti Probe
• System admin functionality
• Status overview, stuck jobs, exception inspection, logs, etc
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19. Th Drive
eC n
om by
Activiti Cycle
mu
nit
y!
• BPM collaboration … done right
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20. Activiti REST API
• Remote communication regarless of the technology
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21. Th Drive
eC n
om b y
Activiti Eclipse designer mu
nit
y!
• Activiti extension support, BPMN 2.0 validation,
hierarchical modeling
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22. Th Drive
eC n
om b y
Activiti Eclipse designer mu
nit
y!
• Pluggable activity support
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23. Th Drive
eC n
om b y
Activiti & IPhone mu
nit
y!
• Mobile BPM == natural evolution of doing work
• Android client coming up!
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24. Th Drive
eC n
om by
Activiti Grails integration mu
nit
y!
• Grails convience capabilities
• Typical configuration
• Easy business archive deployment
• Generate controllers/view/example app
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25. Hello World Activiti Modeler,
MS Visio,
Aris,
(Oracle)
<process id=”helloWorldProcess" name=“My first process">
<startEvent id="theStart" />
<sequenceFlow id="flow1" sourceRef="theStart" targetRef="theTask" />
<userTask id="theTask" name="my task" />
<sequenceFlow id="flow2" sourceRef="theTask" targetRef="theEnd" />
<endEvent id="theEnd" />
</process>
ProcessEngine engine= new ProcessEngineBuilder()
.configureFromResource(“activiti.cfg.xml”)
.buildProcessEngine();
engine.getRuntimeService().startProcessInstanceByKey(“helloWorldProcess”);
Task task = engine.getTaskService().createTaskQuery().singleResult();
Engine.getTaskService().complete(task.getId()); 25

26. Real-life demo
• Use case: banks shouldn’t lend money to just anybody
• Thorough analysis is needed
• All steps needs to be recorded in official documents
• Decisions are done based on Excel decision tables
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27. The mortgage process
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28. The mortgage process
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29. The mortgage process
= CMIS call
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30. The power of Java
Out-of-the-box
Custom Java
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31. The power of Java
public class CreateLoanApplicationDocument implements JavaDelegation {
public void execute(DelegateExecution execution) {
Session session = CmisUtil.createCmisSession("admin", "admin", Constants.ALFRESCO_URL);
Folder folder = CmisUtil.getFolder(session, Constants.LOAN_APPLICATION_STORAGE_FOLDER
Document document = createWordDocument(session, folder, execution);
storeDocumentReferencesAsProcessVariables(execution, folder, document);
session.save();
}
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32. The cool stuff
• That didn’t make it in the demo
• But is just too cool not to show you
• Unit test support
• Query API
• Spring integration
• Method expressions
• JPA integration
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33. Unit testing your processes
• With Activiti, business processes
• Live and breath along your regular app code
• Should be tested just the same!
• Typical BPM vendor & testing
• Activiti supports Junit 3 & 4 and offers lots of
convience while testing
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34. Query API
• No need to learn the intern data model
• Powerful and uniform query API
• Deployments and process definitions
repositoryService.createProcessDefinitionQuery.keyLike(“%mortgage%”).latest();
• Process instances and executions
runtimeService.createProcessInstanceQuery
.processDefinitionKey(“mortgage-process)”.orderByProcessInstanceId().desc();
• History
historyService.createHistoricActivityQuery().processDefinitionId(procDefId)
.activityType(“userTask”).orderByDuration().asc();
• Variables
runtimeService.createProcessInstanceQuery()
.variableValueGreaterThan(“amount”, 50000);
• Tasks, jobs, users, groups, historic activities/process
instances/variables, …

35. Spring integration
• ProcessEngine as a Spring bean
• Delegate to Spring beans
<bean id=“printer” …
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36. Method expressions & JPA
Decision based on
JPA entity property
Spring bean
Process variables
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37. The Activiti Experience
• Satisfy your Activiti itch
• One-stop-shop download
• http://activiti.org
• Demo: “The Activiti Experience”
• Do you have an excuse for
not trying out Activiti tonight?
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38. Did you like what you saw?
• We keep making Activiti better, every day.
• Help us today and tweet your enthousiasm!
• @johnpowell996 I saw #activiti on #devoxx and I like it!
owell
John P esco
Alfr
CEO
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