Re: Workflow engine

> > Just as an aside, I think there are several pretty good Open Source
> > workflow engines; http://openwfe.sourceforge.net/ for one that isn't
> > some Tomcat/J2EE monstrosity.
> Writing a workflow engine and some simple forms module isn't very 
> difficult nor requires a huge amount of time (actually we even have an 
> ObjC one which 'waits' getting integrated).

I clearly see the connection between Groupware and CRM.  The connection
between Groupware and Workflow seems more abstract to me,  a workflow
can be basically anything; but as a source of participants the groupware
server is certainly useful.  Currently getting data from OGo from a
workflow engine is possible since you can usually invoke external
commands or plugins and make use of XML-RPC,  and the same in reverse.
Altough this would be even more straight forward if OGo supported SOAP
since every engine i've met supports that natively.

Would a workflow engine in ObjC/SOPE be able to simply interact with
objects in the OGo space?  (I only have a sketchy understanding of
SOPE).  That would be cool for some simple processes where documents
need to move through a chain user modifcations/approvals.  I guess that
is CRMish.

> The biggest issue is the workflow designer, but openwfe seems to have 
> one. I suppose some graphical Swing app (urks ;-) would be better 
> though. Is there anything which can be used standalone and emits are 
> readable process definition file?

You mean a standalone workflow designer?  Unfortunately most designers
are linked pretty tightly to their respective engines,  and most of
those are labyrinthian J2EE abominations.

The only two stand-alone designer I know of is
http://jawe.objectweb.org/ which reads/emits XPDL files.  XPDL is the
XML Process Description Language.

jawe is currently used by serveral workflow engines:
http://shark.objectweb.org/
http://www.openbusinessengine.org/
http://wfmopen.sourceforge.net/

jawe supports the Meta-Model for participants and lets your build
particpant lists from an LDAP DSA, so with a little rigging you can get
data from OGo and avoid having to build particpant<->realperson
relationships in a third facility.


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