Open-source workflow engine for PHP?

[Imants Horsts]

Hi guys!

Have you ever needed to implement some kind of not trivial workflow in your application?

For example, issue tracking software. Client creates issue report and then your software need to initiate some kind of workflow to solve clients puzzle. Like:

T1 - message client telling that we have received his issue report and will work on it

T2 - create task for IT department to look into clients issue, set some deadline

T3 - if deadline comes, message IT manager and inform that IT dep. have not done something in time

T4 - if IT dep. have solved issue, then create task for Client relation department to contact client and inform him.

T5 - Client department input more info for this issue and close issue

and so on.

I have done that in past and find myself to always developing something from zero and spending man-hours and as result lower my profit by doing so.

Now it's time for me to create new project and again - there is quite extended workflow of tasks needed. I'll create this new project using ATK.

And now my main question (at last) - have you ever used some sort of not self-made workflow engine (preferably based on PHP and open-source) and if yes, then how it's called, was you satisfied with it and so on. I need any information about your experience with this, so don't be shy - just post here in this thread ! :)

[Willem Rheeder]

you can check this out.  It is a platform that implements workflow.  I didnt have time to extract the workflow part, but also need a workflow engine and would be great if it was in ATK.

http://www.tonymarston.net/php-mysql/workflow.html

[Janis Volbergs]

To successfully develop any web project make sure you have following:

1) wireframes for all screens there are gonna be

2) tech spec for each screen

based on 1&2 you will be able to define models and pages you need for your atk4 implementation

then it's up to you to start either with db or with models, but that does not matter really.

then, if you find some complicated bits, paper and pen is your best friend, as always.

my 2 cents.

Cheers.

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[Imants Horsts]

Willem - thanks for link! I'll check this out, but it looks (just looking on screenshots) something old-school :)

Janis - thanks for 2 cents. Drawing wireframes in advance is quite hard in my situation. It's agile development, so client can't precisely explain what he want :) Now I know some most urgent requirements and will work on these, but later I predict that there will be much more new user stories. Anyway, I'm sometimes drawing wireframes on sheet of paper for myself to understand how to develop forms.

But what I was asking in this thread was about workflow software (preferably based on PHP and not Java). I have a feeling that in this project client will need more than one workflow, so, it would be bad to hard-code that. Will be much more easier for me and also for him to use some generic workflow engine and configure it appropriately. That way it'll be easier to create new / edit / administrate workflows.

Last one what I found and probably will check out is this - http://www.nextide.ca/solutions/maestro.

One thing I don't really understand about these workflow engines is how to join them with my own custom forms and actions in "ATK way".

Workflow engines work with simple tasks and these tasks need to be somehow related with my ATK forms.

For example, in workflow I'll have task "Visit client and fix pipe", but in my application I need to show ATK form with some input fields (how much that pipe cost, how many man-hours it took to fix it, how did this and so on) in this case.

I'm not sure about overall design of such application. It's like task tracking, but it's much more extended in forms differ for many types of tasks.

[Romans Malinovskis]

> *Willem* - thanks for link! I'll check this out, but it looks (just looking

> on screenshots) something old-school :)

See also: http://ezcomponents.org/docs/tutorials/Workflow

> One thing I don't really understand about these workflow engines is how to
> join them with my own custom forms and actions in "ATK way".
> Workflow engines work with simple tasks and these tasks need to be somehow
> related with my ATK forms.

> For example, in workflow I'll have task "Visit client and fix pipe", but in
> my application I need to show ATK form with some input fields (how much
> that pipe cost, how many man-hours it took to fix it, how did this and so
> on) in this case.

This part should be easy. You'll need to use your model/form builder to let admin create different models. When you define task you can specify which models needs to be supplied at each step. You can carry on the data forward to display it at the further steps.

You can also take advantage of controllers which would appear as automated tasks in the workflow. Those can be configured individually and can executing command line, calling model methods or even copying data from some models into set of other models.

> I'm not sure about overall design of such application. It's like task
> tracking, but it's much more extended in forms differ for many types of
> tasks.

workflow (aka document management) systems are quite powerful, and might be in high demand. I've heard many times that in many companies they pay big amount of money to avoid writing any code once application is live, ability to tweak workflow through the backend is a great deal.

Regards,
Romans


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