Hi,
I started to work with Galaxy, the workflow module integrated in
E-Groupware, but it’s not very useful and it’s complicated…
So, I found an other Workflow engine : ProcessMaker
(http://www.processmaker.com).
It’s a good software with a lot of Ajax.
It’s maybe a good idea to integrated this product in the next
version of
E-Groupware because a lot of company need a tool like this…
What do you think about that ?
I agree that it is complicated, but I disagree that it is not very
useful. Once set up, it’s quite powerful, and very useful.
Most of its power comes from re-usable agents you write to take
actions for you at an activity. There just aren’t that many general
usage agents.
projectERP uses Workflow to guide manufacturing processes, which is a
little more restricted than credit applications and such. At each
activity, a build agent pulls the inventory and adds it to the work
order, which shuffles a bunch of money around. I’ve got XML-RPC
methods to move the work order (instance) from activity to activity
using scanners. I have a custom UI that displays the current
activities of each work order.
ProcessMaker is certainly pretty, and it does look a lot easier to
create a workflow. Manually drawing the graph obviously gives more
control over the layout. That form builder (http://www.processmaker.com/demo-design-dynaforms/
) is some nice stuff. Looks like eTemplate editor on AJAX. It looks
like the sort of thing that could be useful without a programmer, and
I understand why that would be attractive to many organizations. The
actual creating of the workflow is the hardest part.
Since it has already been integrated with openbravo, (http://www.processmaker.com/mashups/
) it’s obviously possible, but it looks more like two separate systems
that are tied together, rather than an actual integration. There’s a
lot of “Head back to openbravo, let’s go back to ProcessMaker” in that
video. I don’t consider that integration, that’s playing nice
together, which is not nearly as useful.
Integrating an application into eGroupWare (properly) is a little
complicated, because in order to harness the power of eGroupWare, you
need to be able to tie into the linking and hooking systems, and fit
into the framework. Workflow doesn’t link, but it does hook, so other
applications can provide their own agents without needing to change
code.
As a developer who does use workflow, to be honest I don’t really care
what the backend is, because I’ve layered my own frontend on top. The
only requirements I have for a replacement are
- access for other code to move instances along between activities
- can run without a user interface
- equivalent of agents to take automatic action
Nathan Gray
nathan at goarctic dot com
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