[Phileas]

I've just decided to give ProcessMaker a try but have the following hesitation : ProcessMaker 2 or 3 ? Which one to dive in ?

ProcessMaker 3 will have bigs changes as every major release, there will be BPMN 2.0, Gearman and so on... at the end i may waste my time learning release 2 when release 3 will be so different.
What do you think of ?

[breale]

Phileas,

Good question. You should definitely start with 2. Although there will be big changes in Version 3.0, there is really no reason to wait. Version 3 will be out towards the end of the year, but it will still be Beta until the end of Q1 2013. So, best to start with Version 2. In fact, we are already implementing many of the features in Version 3 in Version 2 so the jump won't be so big.

[Phileas]

Thanks breale,

So the only blocking point for me now is the capability for a processaker process to be called by an alternative to web services (http://forum.processmaker.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=7578).
I exposed and asked in a post that is still under moderation but will release 3 bring something for this ?
This question is for me decisive to make a bpm solution choice.
If gulliver allows to start a process then, to my mind, it deserves a tutorial (apparently gulliver documentation is empty) as it should not be difficult after that to make a direct call to a process from external code. This the transition to my next point : documentation. But a question before : gearman may also be an answer to this subject so will the gearman integration be an answer bringing an alternative to web services ?

Next is not a blocking point but the second most important one in my list : it seems there're more efforts in documentation lately. Will it continue to be a priority ?
my personal opinion : i like the principle "release often release early" so having a new pm release eath month is great but i would prefer a release every 2 months along with excellent documentation guides and tutorials.

[ethanpresberg]

Hi Phileas,

I'm not quite sure where you think the ProcessMaker documentation is, but allow me to give you the url:
http://wiki.processmaker.com/

And as for there not being any documentation on the gulliver framework, allow me again to give you the url:
http://wiki.processmaker.com/index.php/ ... ence_Guide

I must say I find your statement quite absurd... ProcessMaker has one of the best wikis for an open source application that dont force charge money, they are constantly updating it, always have been, and it is clear, concise & to the point. I often work with the wiki open because any question you can have is there, and if not then the forums are great, you almost always get a response from a ProcessMaker employee.

What other free open source project/program offers that??

[Phileas]

Hi zeddicus,

I don't know why you putted much energy to transform this into a troll but i won't follow you.

Regarding documentation i read before beginning this thread, we can't seriously say that only a page is a product documentation (http://wiki.processmaker.com/index.php/ ... ence_Guide) as well as we can't say we have the best wiki in the world when we have empty pages (ex: http://wiki.processmaker.com/index.php/ ... evelopment). If you want to have examples of complete documentation, you can have a look on Vaadin java framework (https://vaadin.com/learn) or Yii php framework (http://www.yiiframework.com/doc/), just examples among others.

On the other hand, the wiki is clear and well organised and also seems promising as well as the software itself which is very interesting and promising; the pm business is also evolving in interesting approachs; so you get me wrong all the way as :

- did i say there was no wiki at all ? no
- did i mention we should not be happy with withis great open source application ? no
- did i talk about money ? no
- did i tell there was no updating ? i mentionned the contrary...
- where i gave bad criticisms ? there are just remarks or questions or suggestions about having a better environment

"What other free open source project/program offers that ?" A lot, even in bpm area, and you won't get me wrong a second time : offering all this is fantastic, it's just that pm is not alone in the world, it's also not the only fanstastic product in the world, and has good points and advantages outside of the arguments you mentionned.

[liliana]

Hi Phileas,

As breale said you can start with ProcessMaker 2, since version 3 is going to be released at the end of the year this means that processmaker 2 is not going to dissapear, it will be for a long time, also ProcessMaker 2 will help you as a based for ProcessMaker 3, so there is no reason to waste time testing it, you can find a lot of great features and concepts you can use for the new version.

And I agree with you to have a release every 2 months instead of 1, but that might be implemented for future releases.

Regards!

[eriknyk]

yep, complementing to breale and liliana, processmaker v2 and v3 have differents guidelines, processmaker 2 have its own secuencial diagrams (simple but usable) and processmaker v3 will have absolutly BPMN, so those can be used depending of its project porpuse, but note that PMOS v3, will be in beta at the end of this year.

About the documentation, exactly what documentation type do you need?..CORE documentation or end user documentation?

[Phileas]

About the documentation, exactly what documentation type do you need?..CORE documentation or end user documentation?

It depends of goals and priorities, ie if i have to tell what i need at this precise moment, then it is testing oriented purpose. For this, the documentation needed is all that concerns Gulliver as i believe there's a way to use it for my concern of calling pm process from "outside code". If i'm wrong, then i don't need gulliver documentation and don't need pm either.

On a more general point of view, i looked at processmaker few years ago and finally gave up because of missing things like documentation. Lately, i heard that documentation were taking a new start, that's one of the main reasons (among bpmn 2 and gearman) i came back to have a look again at it. So my answer would be different here as i would wait for the mature documentation (so on every levels) reflecting a mature product. The purpose is here different, it's "documentation as an argument for adopting a product" because we can rely on and also gives trust in the product and its community.

[liliana]

Well, documentation is not an argument but is something important to know what ProcessMaker offers to you, it's true that documentation is having a new look, more documentation has been added in the last 5 months for any kind of levels (from beginners to advanced) in this part it's also important to have community be part of this because they are constantly testing our Product and they give so many great ideas to improve ProcessMaker and documentation.

Don't left aside documentation because it's a very important part of ProcessMaker, as I said before you can explore great features by taking a peek into it.

[amosbatto]

It depends of goals and priorities, ie if i have to tell what i need at this precise moment, then it is testing oriented purpose. For this, the documentation needed is all that concerns Gulliver as i believe there's a way to use it for my concern of calling pm process from "outside code". If i'm wrong, then i don't need gulliver documentation and don't need pm either.

What you have to do is import <install-directory>workflow/public_html/sysGeneric.php into your PHP code. From there you can start calling ProcessMaker's functions, but you may need to import additional files as well, depending upon the class or function that you want to use. See: http://wiki.processmaker.com/index.php/ ... nd_Classes

For example, if you want to call a ProcessMaker function, such as executeQuery(), you need to do this:

Code: Select all

require_once '/opt/processmaker/workflow/public_html/sysGeneric.php';
G::LoadClass('pmFunctions');
executeQuery(...);

It does help to do searches in the forum, because this has been posted before.

If you need to call ProcessMaker functions from a program which can only access PM via the internet, you need to use web services or write directly to the MySQL database.

[Phileas]

Thanks you amosbatto

[Phileas]

ProcessMaker 3.0 has been delayed one year, twice.
Now planned for Q4, can we be sure it won't be delayed once again ? You can understand that 2 delays, near 2 years after, a third delay would make communication (roadmap pages...) unbeliveable

[liliana]

Hi Phileas,

Thanks for your concern, on the past weeks we were focused on the integration with SugarCRM which is basically ProcessMaker 3.0, I wrote documentation about it on our wiki, that's why our Roadmap has been suffered a lot of changes. now we are focused on new features to be added on our Roadmap, but as every open source tool, dates may be vary according to priorities.

It is true that some features (Community and Enterprise Edition) of the Roadmap were out of date, now we are focused on having those dates up to date Now talking about ProcessMaker 3.0, it will be release during this year, with no specific date of release, but definitely dev team has been working on it on the past months.

Once again, thanks for your concern and all your feedback, we do appreciate it and also we are taking into account.

Regards.

[Phileas]

Hi Liliana,

I were not aware ProcessMaker SugarCRM Edition were the basis of ProcessMaker 3.0.
It will be very interesting to see how it evolves.

Regards

[liliana]

If you take a look at the designer embedded in Sugar CRM edition on this example you will see ProcessMaker designing totally with a BMPN standards, we will definitely see major changes during this year, maybe it had been a delay, but this is because we want to show a more a more sophisticated ProcessMaker with a good structure without forgetting of ProcessMaker 2.0.

Any news about this, screenshots, advances, features, everything will be included on our Roadmap, and any suggestions are always welcome

[Phileas]

That's encouraging.
Displaying on the right panel all elements used on the process is a good idea. About suggestions, do you prefer to develop here ? a dedicated thread elsewhere ? or all decomposed in different thread per subject ?

In the meantime, here are my suggestions :

- "Step 5: " on the example, show that the BPMN elements are in the top panel. I suggest a left panel (sliding at will to see better the whole BPMN process) instead as we have more hozirontal space than vertical space due to screen resolution (example : 1920 is more than 1200 or 1080, 1600 is more than 1200 or 900 and so on, so vertical space is expensive while horizontal space is cheaper). Furthermore, we have one lign of BPMN elements in this screenshot while we would have 2, 3 or 4 columns elements in a left sliding panel. I also suggest 2 tabs for this left panel, one for displaying the bpmn elements symbols only, and the second one displaying the symbols with their text legend.

- "Integrate WordPress with Workflow Application" we already talked about would be an excellent example for this next release

- When a BPMN element is cliked on the map, i suggest to display around it the general possible options we could drag&drop to create new linked elements. For example : activity, gateway, transition, event, text annotation.

- Deployment from dev to production : i suggest a one click deployment capability from a development environment to a production environment (whatever one server or a cluster). If it's a server, location and credentials could be fullfilled in preferences. In case of a cluster, processmaker in dev environment could ask to a backend through web services the list of servers with their credentials. The targetted servers would be "pushed" in a maintenance mode during the updates. Eventually, servers would be taken by batch, ie servers 1 and 2 are managed while the others are still in operation mode, then servers 2 and 4 and so on.

- For the roadmap 3.0 itself, i suggest to add :
* Import/export BPMN 2
* Gearman => http://forum.processmaker.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=7580
* Rule engine => http://forum.processmaker.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=7584
* Appstore => http://forum.processmaker.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=7581
* Cubrid support => http://forum.processmaker.com/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=30334
* Messagepack support => http://bugs.processmaker.com/view.php?id=9230 with examples in wiki

[liliana]

Phileas,

If you could open another thread for suggestions will be great, this because I'll send the thread to dev. team who is in charge of developing ProcessMaker.

Your suggestions are great!!!, in fact I've sent the information about integration to wordpress to dev team, and hope this will be soon on our Roadmap as well as gearman and rule engine.

Anyhow, I'm sending this information to ProcessMaker dev team to have those suggestions analyzed as well as the information about Artisteer for Dynaforms.

Thanks again!!

[Phileas]

Thanks Liliana.
Based on your advice, i open threads for the suggestions mentionned that don't have already one.

[Phileas]

Hi Liliana,

I were not aware ProcessMaker SugarCRM Edition were the basis of ProcessMaker 3.0.
It will be very interesting to see how it evolves.

Regards

Are SugarCRM and ProcessMaker 3.0 really integrated ? because that's a good idea.
Or they are 2 different products and there is ProcessMaker 3.0 on one side and ProcessMaker SugarCRM edition on the other side ?

[Phileas]

Phileas,

If you could open another thread for suggestions will be great, this because I'll send the thread to dev. team who is in charge of developing ProcessMaker.

Your suggestions are great!!!, in fact I've sent the information about integration to wordpress to dev team, and hope this will be soon on our Roadmap as well as gearman and rule engine.

Anyhow, I'm sending this information to ProcessMaker dev team to have those suggestions analyzed as well as the information about Artisteer for Dynaforms.

Thanks again!!

Hi liliana,

Any news on these points and Processmaker 3 announcement ?

[liliana]

Hi Phileas,

Yes, a beta version will be released by the end of this month or beginning of March. I'll let you know if we will have installers to distribute the community to have it tested.

Regards,

[dpicone]

Hi Phileas,

Yes, a beta version will be released by the end of this month or beginning of March. I'll let you know if we will have installers to distribute the community to have it tested.

Regards,

Any updates now that we are in April and no betas have been released?

[liliana]

Hi,

Dev team is still working to have a great final product, so I don't like to give a final date of a release either a beta or a final version. As I said before any updates on this I'll let you know.

Regards,

[JobbeS]

Hi,

We are already using version 2.5.x and it's great! But at the moment we are evaluating systems which support bpmn 2.0 and use a more modern interface. More of our customers are requesting simplified interfaces for their phones/tables like bootstrap. Is there any update yet, or a beta/evaluation version as we have to decide soon on which direction we have to go. Will there be any release soon, or is it still months away from being done?

Regards,
Jobbe

[liliana]

Hi,

ProcessMaker 3 has suffered some delay, but it will come out soon, it is in its final development stage, however we can't set an exact date of release. What are your requirements you need in a new version?

[Phileas]

Javascript/Coffeescript language for script tasks would be fun.

[JobbeS]

Hi, sorry for the late reply, we have been very busy.

There are some things that we are looking for in a modernized product.

- As I said in my previous message, a mobile interface which is responsive for tablets/phones like bootstrap would be great.
- The BPMN 2.0 standard with it's elements like processmapper.
- A more intuitive designer; drag/drop form elements and setting properties w/o refreshing the whole interface.
- More control over the user interface. The current extjs has too much javascript, which gives less control for modifying the interface.
- Our users don't understand the complex interface with dropdown menu's like the 'information' menu. They either can't find the button, or get lost in al the tabs, and can't find the dynaform.

Is there an estimate yet? weeks, months. We are currently evaluating products which already have most of these things, and need to make a decision based on features and future proof of the product.

Thanks!

[liliana]

Hi All,

JobbeS the 3 first points are included in a further release

Phileas I'm sending your request to our Dev team

Now we are working to have everything ready for the release, the product finished, documentation ready, and everything which implies the release of this new product/version of ProcessMaker. I don't want to give an exact date of the release we are still working on this, however I'd like to hear/read your suggestions on how to improve ProcessMaker.

Regards,

[Phileas]

Thanks you liliana.
As you want to hear suggestions, here's one : Processmaker is a good product in itself. It is based on php but should not depend on php as a key element for the customer to make a choice.
This is the reason why i suggest the javascript/node.js support (in addition to php, not to replace it of course). This is a thing we can discuss if you want more information but as you saw, javascript and node.js have their crazy momentum for the last few years and it's exploding more every day. So being able to code in javascript along a process the same way we do in php woudl also quite be a momentum for processmaker.

[breale]

Phileas,

You have fired up some great debate and discussion in this thread - thanks. I will just add a bit more information here that I hope will be useful:

1) There is some confusion around what we meant by SugarCRM and ProcessMaker being based on the same product. Let me explain. The FRONT END in our "ProcessMaker SugarCRM Edition (PMSE)" is based on a new front end Javascript Library that we have created over the past year and a half. This front end library was used to build the PMSE product. The PMSE product is COMPLETELY separate from ProcessMaker. It is a product that was designed to add BPM and Advanced Workflow as a native module for SugarCRM. The engine is quite a bit different than the current PM engine due to the extra plumbing that we had to work with inside the Sugar Product.
2) The Javascript Library used for PMSE will be rolled out in its first iteration in PM 3.0. You will see that the designer is much easier to use and much more flexible (P.S. - we will not show next activities when hovering over an existing activity because we have recent to believe there is some prior patent art out regarding this technique. So, although I agree it is clever, we probably won't use it - at least not for now). This javascript library will continue to grow throughout the rest of the year to include more and more of the most common BPMN 2.0 elements.
3) This new frontend UI library is based on a completely REST API so that it can easily be extended for clients that want to get creative and design additional ways of interacting with the canvas.
4) The REST API has also been extended to the "running a case" portion of the product, making it much easier to design your own front end and use our backend or vice versa if you want to.
5) Documentation has improved; we have no intention of turning back. Our internal team continues to grow.
6) We have already done a few client implementations where we use Gearman. It worked very nice. We will begin rearchitecting parts of the backend starting in September, and you will see some interesting new ideas/developments coming out for the backend by early next year.
7) Release Date? PM 3.0 will be released to partners and clients for testing by NEXT WEEK!!! Yup - finally. Anyone else who is reading this deep into this thread also deserves access - so just drop me a personal line to brian at that underwater statue dot com and we will get you early access (little riddle to solve). From BETA we will move to RC in July and hopefully to a stable version by late August if all goes well.
Oh,...and there already is a rules engine! We released it as one of our own enterprise plugins and it is pretty awesome. You should ask for a trial of it if you are interested. Otherwise, I am sure that you can integrate with an existing one as mentioned earlier in the thread.