Usually our minor releases are maintenance releases only, but this time we’ve fixed a bunch of bugs and improved some annoyances to make using Bonita Open Solution just that much more user-friendly.  (And – we’ve made some changes to the database schema that require a migration.  See below.)

What version is this?

Have you upgraded more than once?  If you’ve lost track of which BOS version you are using, you can now peek and see – whether you are in Bonita Studio* or in Bonita User Experience.

Dang it, this variable doesn’t belong here

BOS 5.6 allowed you to promote a variable from local (task level) to global (pool level).  You can now move a variable from one task to another.

Data mapping is a snap!

Use best practice naming conventions for your variables, and mapping them between a parent and sub-processes just got a lot easier.

How do you say this in Java?

BOS displays the Java type associated with each variable type to make choosing the right variable type easier. (It may be an integer to some, but it’s a Java.lang.Long to the process developer…)

What is my connector returning?

Test it to see and browse its output.

Pick a date

The date field in an end user form now offers a date picker.

And…

• In the BOS Teamwork edition
  • Import process diagrams from Visio
  • Preview forms in a look’n’feel
  • See the status of a shared repository*
• In the BOS Efficiency edition
  • Import process diagrams from Aris

.

*scroll all the way down to the bottom of the page

Migrate

We’ve also done some tinkering with the Bonita Execution Engine to fix an event related issue in the clustering environment.  That means a migration from BOS 5.6 to BOS 5.6.1.

If you’re still using BOS 5.5 and are ready to upgrade, you can migrate directly to BOS 5.6.1.

The collaboration and advanced productivity features available with the Bonita Open Solution Subscription Pack are now included in the publicly available documentation – so everyone can better see how they are used.

Subscription Pack features are marked “SP” (the image below shows an example).

These SP features are described in the section for which they apply – for example, under:

• Process Design (User Guidance, process templates, category labels, KPI/BAM, using contexts, design collaboration, generating process documentation…)
• Connectivity (graphical database and SAP queries, Salesforce connectors, web service calls with XML and POJO…)
• Data and variables (complex data objects as variables…)
• Form field design (define page order dynamically, using templates for forms and for field widgets, grouping field widgets, contingent fields, multi-instantiated fields, using connectors in forms…)
• Web applications (redirect forms to external URL, customize applications, form internationalization…)
• System administration (multi-tenancy)
• Process administration (filtering in User Experience, modifying timers and deadlines in running processes, error management, user privileges, advanced monitoring and reporting, changing User Experience look’n’feel…)
• Document management (managing documents with running cases…)
• Process simulation (using unlimited resources, detailed simulation reports…)

If you don’t have a version of BOS-SP to play with already, take note of this bonus: all BonitaSoft training includes a trial version of BOS Teamwork. Cool.

And here’s something BPMN we recently added to the BonitaSoft documentation – though the feature itself has been available in Bonita Open Solution since the 5.6 version release.

(Call it a hidden treasure.)

Export a process model in BPMN2.

The Documentation team has just finished updating tutorials and videos explaining the collaboration features in the Bonita Open Solution Subscription Pack.

The includes a repository management feature which allows processes and artifacts to be made accessible, to be synchronized and edited in real time on a shared SVN server.

Special features such as automatic synchronizing, locking processes in use or reverting to previous versions, are quick and easy to use.

All you need is a SVN repository to be set up and configured beforehand, and an internet connection.  All features are accessible from the Repository menu in Bonita Studio.

Design collaboration features

A series of videos briefly and concisely explains the different functions which are very useful in teamwork.

Check them out in the BonitaSoft documentation video library.

For example, by defining a “test context” and a “production context” and associating different variables to each context, there is no need to change variable values in connectors, forms, or other places where variables necessarily differ in different environments.

A context is a set of key-value pairings. Context keys (which will be replaced by a predefined value) can be used as input in most text variables.

When a process is associated with a context and then run, the context keys are replaced by the associated values defined for that context.

The online BonitaSoft documentation system includes both open source and Subscription Pack features, so we’ve added a new video tutorial in the online BonitaSoft documentation system that shows how to define contexts and associate a key-value pair with each one.  (Note that videos are found at the end of a feature documentation page.)

There’s also a video tutorial that shows an example of how to use contexts in the configuration of an email connector.

Is there a video tutorial you’d like to see? Let us know via reply to this post.

This should make it a bit easier to find the bit of information you need as you configure simulation.

You can use simulation in Bonita Open Solution to evaluate the way a process runs in multiple iterations, under different resource availabilities and different load profiles.

A simulation runs a specified number of iterations over a specified period of time, using either simulated data or assigned probabilities, and the cumulated result of all iterations is shown in a report.

At the process level, you’ll need to define resources needed needed at various steps in the process.

You can choose to define simulation parameters on individual tasks (e.g., data to fill variables, resources needed to complete a task, and more) and transitions (e.g., conditions using simulation variables, or probabilities that the process will take one path or another.)

And again at the process level, define a load profile which will be used to characterize the iterations of the process to be run in the simulation.

Running a simulation produces and exports a report which details what happened at the process and task level in the simulation.

Inside the documentation, there is a how-to tutorial for each of the simulation parameters that you might want to define (see below). There is also a new video available, Overview of Simulation Feature (thanks to Frederic Bouquet), that shows where to find the various places to configure simulation parameters and characteristics.

Overview of Simulation Feature is also available from the video library:

BOS 5.6 includes an example process called Delivery-Simulation, which illustrates how to configure a very simple simulation, using two processes with the same steps but slightly different flows. Try running both to see and compare the simulation reports.  You can find this example from the Welcome page of Bonita Studio:

More improvements are on the way.  Stay tuned!

Default Eclipse preferences TreeView

If you are not familiar with Eclipse preferences, you can have an in-depth look of how preferences works in this article by Lars Vogel.

First remove all the preferences you don’t need in your RCP. Some of these were brought in by 3rd party plug-ins such as JDT.

You’ll have to override the postWindowOpen() method of the WorkbenchWindowAdvisor application:

This gives you better visibility of your RCP preferences.

Next the idea is to build a new UI for this dialog, keeping the Eclipse PreferencePage mechanism. To show a quick preview of the result I made a mockup of this dialog using the WindowBuilder tool. With this tool, you can draw your UI very easily, though a background knowledge of SWT helps a lot.

WindowBuilder overview

Using mockups is a good practice to test your user interface and collect your team’s feedback. Here we clearly want to have an “OS X style” for our preferences. Once the mockup shows the interface the way you want it, you can  go ahead with your implementation using the code generated by WindowBuilder. The generated code is pretty clean and easy to modify.

Eclipse preference API

Next the goal is to integrate the PreferencePages to the new Dialog. In Eclipse you can define a preference page using an extension point. Thus a PreferencePage is bound to an ID. To find them you can use the PreferenceManager like this :

Then, once you retrieve the IPreferenceNode, you can create the page in a Composite:

In addition, I found it useful to reuse the Eclipse keyword contributions linked to those pages. To achieve this, I implemented my own listener inspired from the one in the default preference tree filter.

Here is a quick preview of the result:

I’ll be sharing more cool Eclipse stuff soon!

Have you seen the featured features du jour of the day as we count down to the BOS 5.5 release on 25 May?  (that’s tomorrow…)

Check ‘em out:

• Searchable tree view in Bonita Studio:

• Debug – skip connectors activation when in test mode:

• Never mind the groovy code – use a table to specify a conditions on a transition:

Thanks to the feedback of our community and our many users – improvements happen!

Recent contributions

Android App: TODO list.  Mobile BPM!

Do you have a pattern, connector or a process to share?  Upload it to the Bonita Community.

They’re blogging about us

Joe McKendrick at SOA in Action shares some thoughts from Miguel about getting started with BPM.

Let us know if you see Bonita in the blogosphere.

They’re tweeting about us

Tweet tweet:

@techsnoop; @kellyrigotti; @MedAminAkodad; @VentechVC; ipoBound; FilippiMichel; @santiagomblanco; @ulfreich; @chilcano; @Tedesign; @Tobiasopdebrou; @katouadh; @extentechsean; @adam_deane; @chapin4u; @questetra; @jaMartinValdes; @CPHaarmann; @pigbar; @fbastos79; @silvaalexandre; @jpehouman; @bullysoares; @imamuragenichi; @mercelrufino; lijobs_sales; @tweets_jobs; @ThomasFreibel; @avidalc; @fgianferrari; @FOSSwiki; @chapin4u; @anjo0722; @maylo_pfe; @TalendCommunity; @pdpost; @exo_portugues; @JBrulland; @bobbickel; @ipobound

Our hash tags: #bos5 = Bonita Open Solution 5, #bonitasoft, #bpm = business process management, #workflow , #opensource = Open Source, #oss = Open Source Software, #ow2

See you tomorrow at the BonitaDay Webcast!

Here’s a short video that will introduce you to the built-in reporting features that Bonita Open Solution provides.

You’ll see the default user dashboard and how to configure it to include some basic reports such as: “Steps per priority”, “Average step pending time” and “Number of cases started”.

Extract valuable information from your application in a few clicks!

You can use this feature to monitor runtime issues – solving them leads to better performance management, for instance, detect tasks that are exceedingly time-consuming and perhaps improve the process design to get rid of the bottlenecks.

Also, reporting can provide additional information needed when performing load balancing. For example, by detecting a variation in the volume of cases started; you may allocate more or less resources to it (be it servers or human operators).

People (well, me at least ) very often have a need for some hands-on control. And in a process that drives itself, there are guaranteed to be some users who are going to need to take the wheel, either because a tree has suddenly appeared in the middle of the flow path, or – just because.

Human steps in a process flow need flexibility for the humans who act in them.

This video shows a bit about how the user in a process designed with Bonita Open Solution can manually “push the pause button,”

reassign a task, change its priority, modify some data in it, and so on.

Nice to know that if you need it, the driver’s seat is yours.