Cloud Native Business Automation with Activiti Cloud was presented. It was explained with an example of a Twitter-based trending topics campaign. The benefits of modeling processes with BPMN and implementing them as microservices with Activiti Cloud were discussed. Key components of the Activiti Cloud architecture like connectors, query and audit modules were overviewed. The future of integrating additional tools like Jenkins X, Spring Cloud Kubernetes and Istio was briefly mentioned.

1. Cloud Native Business Automation
With Activiti Cloud
jdk.io

2. Activiti Cloud
activiti.org
Gitter: Activiti/Activiti7
Twitter:
• @activiti
• @salaboy
• @ryandawsongb
Github:
• Activiti
• ryandawsonuk
• erdemedeiros
Ryan Dawson Elias De Medeiros

3. Aims
• Show what Cloud Native Business Automation means
• Explain this with a Twitter-based open source example
• Reveal the advantages of Cloud Native Business Automation

4. Agenda
● Business process Automation - BPM & BPMN
● Trending topics example
● Monolith vs Microservices
● Activiti Cloud Architecture
● Activiti Connectors
● Query and Audit modules
● The future

5. BPM & BPMN

6. BPM
Business Process Management
● Modeling
● Management
● Automation
● Measurement
● Optimization
Popular in:
Healthcare, manufacturing,
publishing, insurance.

7. BPMN
Business Process Model And Notation
● Standard for Business Process Modeling
● Specification for
○ Graphical representation
○ Execution semantics
● Currently in the version 2.0 (January
2011)
○ www.omg.org/spec/BPMN/2.0/PDF

8. BPMN - Standardised Visibility

9. Benefits of BPM
● Common language between technical and domain experts
○ Bridge between the design and implementation
● Ensure that the same steps are performed no matters who is handling it
● Easy to monitor and make changes
○ Which is the current state of a customer order?
○ Where are we spending time while processing orders?
■ Where are the bottlenecks?
■ Can we improve it by redesigning the process?

10. Trending topics
example

11. Trending Topics Campaigns
● Imagine we’re a marketing firm
● We want to run campaigns to incentivise social media (e.g.
Twitter) users to promote brands
● We’ll periodically reward users who best promote the brand

12. Trending Topics Campaigns BPMN
Reward Process
Tweet Analysis Process

13. Design ->
Implementation

14. Design -> Implementation
● We designed our process in a modelling tool
● In it each Service Task is a block of logic
● We need to implement that logic
● Typically with a Java Class that implements JavaDelegate
● Java Delegates wire custom code into BPMN processes

15. Java Delegates
<serviceTask name="Process Tweet"
activiti:class="org.activiti.runtime.service.ProcessTweetDelegate"
>
public class ProcessTweetDelegate implements JavaDelegate {
@Override
public void execute(DelegateExecution execution) throws Exception {
// perform processing
}
}

16. Java Classpath Sharing
● Implementing the Service Tasks as Java Delegates tends to
mean they share a JVM
● And they also share a Java Classpath with the Process
Engine
● So each new process adds further classes and libraries to
the Java classpath

17. Monolith vs Microservices
● Single JVM = monolith
● This constrains us if we want to:
○ scale parts independently
○ exploit fault-tolerance using replicas
○ release components independently ...

18. Let’s Go Cloud Native
● What if our Service Tasks could be microservices?
● And the BPM engine could be a microservice too?
Process
Tweet
Process
Tweet
Analyse
Tweet

19. Activiti 7
Principles/Approaches
● 12 factors App
● Domain Driven Design
Tools/frameworks
● Spring Boot 2.0
● Spring Cloud
● Docker
● Kubernetes
● Helm

20. Getting the most from Kubernetes

21. Activiti Cloud
Architecture

22. Infrastructure

23. For us: how all these autonomous services work together in a resilient way
•Glue and Tooling for our Cloud Native Services
• Service Registry
• Distributed Configuration Service
• Distributed Messaging (Streams)
• Distributed logging and monitoring
• Gateway
• Netflix (Circuit Breakers, Bulkheads, Fallbacks, Feign)
• Contracts
• Cloud Deployers
Spring Cloud

24. Infrastructure

25. Application

26. Application

27. Campaign Runtime Bundle
Process executor

28. Runtime Bundle Implementation
● Spring boot app
● Maven dep to add starter
● Processes in src/main/resources
● Maven dep for DB
● Spring Cloud Stream config
● Message to stream starts process

29. Activiti Connectors

30. Application

31. Cloud Connectors
•Integration points
• Service task business logic
■ Process incoming tweet
■ Perform sentiment analysis
■ Rank the authors
■ ...

32. Before - Java Delegates
<serviceTask name="Process Tweet"
activiti:class="org.activiti.runtime.service.ProcessTweetDelegate"
>
public class ProcessTweetDelegate implements JavaDelegate {
@Override
public void execute(DelegateExecution execution) throws Exception {
// perform processing
}
}
Same JVM as
process executor

33. Now - Spring Cloud Streams
<serviceTask name="Process Tweet"
implementation="Process English Tweet">
@EnableBinding(ProcessingConnectorChannels.class)
public class TwitterProcessingConnector {
@StreamListener(value = "twitterProcessingConsumer")
public void process(IntegrationRequestEvent event) {
// perform processing
// send result back
}
}
spring.cloud.stream.bindings.twitterProcessingConsumer.destination=Process English Tweet
public interface ProcessingConnectorChannels {
@Input("twitterProcessingConsumer")
SubscribableChannel twitterProcessingConsumer();
}
Different JVM / docker
container:
Can scale independently.

34. So What Does Our Architecture
Look Like Now?

35. Campaign Processes Recap
Reward Process
Tweet Analysis Process

36. Process Architecture
● Messages to Runtime Bundle
start processes
● Runtime bundle executes
process according to the BPMN
● Calls out to connectors
● Ranking connector used by both
processes
● Further components (not shown)
add supplementing services
(query, gateway etc.)

37. Query and Audit
modules

38. Application

39. Campaign Query Service

40. [Campaign Audit Service]

41. Demo

42. Activiti Cloud BluePrint
Trending Topic Campaigns

43. Services Build Through Jenkins-X

44. Services Promoted Through Helm
● Jenkins X uses a git repo to represent the environment.
● This maps to a namespace (in this case staging)
● Kubectl get pods in that namespace shows us what’s
running:

45. Campaign Dashboard

46. The future

47. Look into the
Future•Jenkins X (in progress)
•Spring Cloud Kubernetes (in progress)
•Istio Service Mesh (about to start)
•JHipster (in progress)
•JHipster
The Future

48. Look into the
Future
Digital Business
Platform
● Where there are review processes, there are often
documents
● Activiti is supported by Alfresco, makers of the
Alfresco Content Repository
● Activiti Cloud is part of the evolution of the Alfresco
Digital Business Platform, which also includes the
Content Repository. a UI Development Framework
built on Angular and more
● Expect more cool cloud stuff in this space too

49. Thanks!
Please do chat with us!
activiti.org
Gitter: Activiti/Activiti7
Twitter:
• @activiti
• @salaboy
• @ryandawsongb
Github:
• Activiti
• salaboy
• ryandawsonuk
• erdemedeiros
Have a look at the example!
...and the video (more to come)