Using Kaleo Workflow Processes in Liferay Portal

Before workflow can be used, you must define which types of assets on the portal are workflow-enabled. If you have created additional definitions, you must also choose the workflow definition to use for each asset that is workflow-enabled.

Figure 6.7: You can select which site to work on by using the drop-down menu in the Content section of the control panel.

To demonstrate how this works, we'll create a press release. Press releases should be posted in the Newsroom section of the web site, so before setting specific workflow configuration options or creating content, create the Newsroom site and switch to it in the control panel. In Workflow Configuration, set Web Content to use the Single Approver workflow.

Next, create two users, a Content Creator and a Content Reviewer. The Content Creator logs in and creates a new press release for Nose-ster and clicks Submit for Publication. This triggers the workflow process and notifies the Content Reviewer. When the Content Reviewer logs in, he or she can assign the workflow task to him- or herself and approve the content.

Figure 6.8: Before a Content Reviewer can approve content, he must assign it to himself, or have an administrator assign it to him.

Once the content is approved, it can be posted on the Press Releases page in a web content display portlet.

There's more. EE customers get extra features that enable them to create workflows without having to deal with XML.

Kaleo forms and workflow designer

Developers who are used to working with XML are generally able to create workflow definitions. Other users may not be so comfortable with it. In fact, even skilled developers can make mistakes that break a definition and require time to troubleshoot. To help streamline the creation of workflow definitions and empower more users to create custom workflows, Liferay provides the Kaleo Workflow Designer in Liferay 6.1 EE.

There are two pieces to the workflow designer: Kaleo Forms and Kaleo Designer. Kaleo Forms is an extension of the Dynamic Data Lists feature (covered in chapter 5). This enables you to create web forms and basic applications, and then apply a workflow to govern the processing of those forms. Kaleo Designer is a drag and drop interface for creating new workflow definitions. It can be used in conjunction with Kaleo Forms or standalone to create workflow definitions without having to write XML.

Let's look at Kaleo Forms first.

Kaleo Forms

Add the Workflow Forms portlet to a page. The initial state, the Summary tab displays the same information that you might have seen in My Workflow Tasks in the control panel. Any forms that are available for processing through the workflow can be initiated through the Submit New button, as the below image indicates.

Figure 6.9: Kaleo Forms give you a convenient way to manage all available workflows in the portal.

Click on Processes to view any existing workflow processes or to create new ones. Any processes that are already available are listed here. If you're coming here for the first time, however, there won't be any, so let's create one. Click Add. You'll see the screen below.

Figure 6.10: The Workflow Process Creation Page

Set a name and a description. Next, you'll define an Entry Definition and an Initial Form, choose or create a workflow and Workflow Task Forms.

Entry Definition: This is a Dynamic Data List Definition, you can use an existing definition here, or create a custom one through the UI.

Initial Form: You can customize the display of the Entry Definition with the Inital Form. This can include things like adding Pagination or altering some other display feature.

Workflow: You can choose any existing workflow definition here, or define a new one.

Workflow Task Forms: This is where you can define how the workflow definition interacts with form definitions. You can trigger a workflow action to occur along with a form action, such as a notification, or have a multistep process where part of the form is completed but needs to be approved before the user can complete another part of the form.

You probably noticed that when choosing a workflow, you also have the option to create a new one. This is where the Kaleo Workflow Designer can help you build a workflow without having to write any XML. Let's see how this works.

Kaleo Designer

Kaleo Designer provides a drag and drop interface for users to create custom workflows. It's an incredibly powerful tool for managing workflow defintions. The Workflow Designer can only be accessed through the Kaleo Forms portlet, but definitions created can be used for other processes as well.

Figure 6.11: The Workflow Designer

There are seven types of nodes that you can add to a defintion. The node types are Condition, End, Fork, Join, Start, State, and Task. If you've read the entire chapter, you'll notice that Start and End aren't node types that we've previously discussed; that's because they're actually just State nodes, with certain fields prefilled to help streamline the creation process. Since every workflow has a start and end state, you'd have to do this anyway.

Figure 6.12: The Node Configuration Menu

Each node that you add has a pop-up edit menu which lets you add anchors, attach tasks, or delete the node. Anchors connect the node to other nodes, so for each connection, you need an anchor. To transition to the next node, you'd add an anchor, create a new node, and then click the first anchor and drag it to the anchor on the new node. This creates a transition.

To get a feel for how the designer works, let's use the workflow designer to duplicate the default workflow definition. When we choose the option to Add Defintion from the Kaleo Forms portlet, it creates a blank workflow defintion with start and end nodes. To make this work, we'll add two tasks, fill in the relevant information, assign the tasks properly, and create the transitions.

First add two tasks, and use the edit icon to name them Review and Update. Next, connect the nodes so that Review has four nodes, as follows: one receiving the transition from StartNode, one sending a transition to Update, one receiving a transition from Update, and one sending a transition to EndNode.

Figure 6.13: Your workflow should look something like this.

Next, we want to add the correct assignments and notifications. Click on Review. The box on the left shows all the proprerties of the Review node. In the assignments category, assign the task to the Portal Content Reviewer role. Click on Notifications and create a notification with the type On Assignment. Now move to the Update node, and assign it to the Content Creator with its own notification.

Next let's go through all of the transitions, and make sure that they're named correctly. What are the transitions? Every time you created an arrow from one node to another it created a transtion. By default, these transitions get system generated names, so we'll rename them to all to something more human readable. First click on the arrow going from the Start node to the Review node and set the name as Submit and set Default to true--we'll leave all the others as false. Set the name of the transition from Review to Update to Reject, and the one from Update to Review to Resubmit. Lastly, set the name of the transition from Review to the EndNode to Approve.

Now let's take a look at the generated XML. It should look a lot like our default workflow, only a tiny bit messier, as the nodes display in the order they were created, not in the logical order that happens when a human writes the code. Save your definition and it's ready to use.