Imixs-BPMN Modelling Tool 1.4.4 Released!

With the latest version 1.4.4. of the BPMN modelling Tool Imixs-BPMN, the open source project ‘Imixs-Workflow‘ provides several enhancements in modelling human centric workflows. Among other new features it is now possible to model scheduled events on a working day basis. This allows scheduling events in individual time frames ignoring weekends. Another enhancement is the visualisation of custom task properties. ACL settings or custom editor settings are now visualized by info icons. Also the Process-ID of a Imixs-Task element is now displayed in the graphical representation of a BPMN model.

bpmn2-customtask

Some bug fixes align the new release with the latest version of Eclipse BPMN2 for the Mars Release. The new version can be downloaded and installed from the Eclipse Marketplace. Further information about the BPMN modelling tool can be found on the project homepage www.imixs.org.  Take also a look into the tutorial “How to Create a Workflow Model“.

How to Run a Custom Build of Imixs-Office-Workflow Using Docker

The Imixs-Workflow project supports Docker and provides also a Docker image for the workflow management suite ‘Imixs-Office-Workflow‘. Imixs-Office-Workflow provides a full featured business process management suite and can also be used to be extended in various ways. With Docker it becomes easy to setup a custom build for development, test and productive environments.

Setup a New Custom Build

To setup a new custom build of Imixs-Office-Workflow you can use the Imixs-Office-Archetype maven project, which provides a simple starting point for custom development. To run you custom build using Docker you should add a docker folder into your project with the following structure:

-/.data
-/.deployments
-/configuration
 |-standalone.xml
-docker-compose.yml
-Dockerfile

Customize Wildfly standalone.xml

First you can use the standalone.xml file located in the /configuration folder to configure your wildfly server to your project needs. Typically this will be a data-pool configuration and a security realm. This is an example of a custom database pool configuration which can be run in a docker container to access a postgres database running in another Docker container:

...
  <datasource jta="true" jndi-name="java:/jdbc/office-test" pool-name="office-test" enabled="true" use-ccm="true">
 <connection-url>jdbc:postgresql://postgres/office-test</connection-url>
 <driver-class>org.postgresql.Driver</driver-class>
 <driver>postgresql-9.3-1102.jdbc41.jar</driver>
 <security>
 <user-name>postgres</user-name>
 <password>adminadmin</password>
 </security>
 <validation>
 <validate-on-match>false</validate-on-match>
 <background-validation>false</background-validation>
 </validation>
 <timeout>
 <set-tx-query-timeout>false</set-tx-query-timeout>
 <blocking-timeout-millis>0</blocking-timeout-millis>
 <idle-timeout-minutes>0</idle-timeout-minutes>
 <query-timeout>0</query-timeout>
 <use-try-lock>0</use-try-lock>
 <allocation-retry>0</allocation-retry>
 <allocation-retry-wait-millis>0</allocation-retry-wait-millis>
 </timeout>
 <statement>
 <share-prepared-statements>false</share-prepared-statements>
 </statement>
 </datasource>
 ...

Note that the connection-url points to the host ‘postgres’ which need to be linked later to this container.

The Dockerfile

Next you can create a custom Dockerfile to describe you Imixs-Office-Workflow container for your custom build:

FROM imixs/office-workflow:latest
# add custom standalone.xml file
ADD configuration/standalone.xml /opt/wildfly/standalone/configuration/

The Dockerfile is quite simple. It extends the office imixs/office-workflow container and adds the new custom configuration file standalone.xml into the container

Docker-Compose

We use now docker-compose to describe the environment where we run a PostgreSQL Server, a WildFly Application Server and our custom build of Imixs-Office-Workflow.

 postgresloml:
  image: postgres:9.4.6
  environment:
    POSTGRES_PASSWORD: adminadmin
    POSTGRES_DB: office-test
  volumes:
    - ./.data/db:/var/lib/postgresql/data

 officetest:
  build: .
  environment:
    WILDFLY_PASS: adminadmin
  ports:
    - "8080:8080"
    - "9990:9990"
  links: 
    - postgresloml:postgres
  volumes:
   - "./.deployments:/opt/wildfly/standalone/deployments"

The docker-compose.yml file describes the PostgreSQL container with a custom database named ‘office-test’ (see the standalone.xml file), and a new imixs/ofifce-workflow container running our custom build of Imixs-Office-Workflow. The volumes parameter binds the local ./deployments/ folder which is used for autodeployments our application artifacts and also to configure hot-deployment during the development phase.

To start the environment simply run:

docker-compose up

That’s it! Now you can deploy your application aretfact of Imixs-Office-Workflow together with ah postgresql-jdbc.jar file into the local ./deploymetns folder.

After you access Imixs-Office-Workflow from your web browser (http://localhost:8080/office-test) the default user account ‘admin’ with the default password ‘adminadmin’ will be created and can be changed from the Admin section