- Thu Jun 29, 2017 7:10 am
#793547
Hi,
I used ProcessMaker to help a non-profit streamline some of their CRM, complince and general workflow tasks. I had next to no experience with workflow / business process software / development before. However, I was stuck by how ProcessMaker's processes are similar to non-deterministic definitive state machines. These, I had a fair bit of experience with in my background developing for Amazon's AWS platform, specifically their "Simple Workflow Service" and more recently Step Functions. I know what you're going to say: "wait, you just said you had no experience with workflow software." And maybe you're right, but the truth is I never really considered applying it to processes involving human workflow, but more as a way to ensure with a good deal of certitude that a automated process either completed successfully, or if it didnt then I would know that too. Too many times with things like importing data in a business to business setting stuff is just missing or fallen through the cracks when a server hiccups, and without something like that there is no way to know what you needed to retry.
In any event, has anybody considered trying to hack the Designer in process maker to design these serverless type functions? Here is the simplest example of one:
Because, the designer for Step functions sucks. Logic Apps in Microsoft Azure are a little better, but not by a lot.
In AWS the state machine itself is called the Step Function, and each "node" is called an State which can be as simple as an API call for an REST resource to running a Lambda function (serverless python or nodeJS code). I also have experience with Microsoft's platform, in Azure they're called Logic Apps.
Approaching it from a different tact, has anyone considered making like a... cloud exporter/compiler? Where instead of using PM just as a designer, you use PM as normal but your logic and processes run in a serverless setting for scalability and triggered by an API gateway? AWS uses a JSON-based structured language they call States Language. It's not quite how PM stores data, but its not Greek either.
I used ProcessMaker to help a non-profit streamline some of their CRM, complince and general workflow tasks. I had next to no experience with workflow / business process software / development before. However, I was stuck by how ProcessMaker's processes are similar to non-deterministic definitive state machines. These, I had a fair bit of experience with in my background developing for Amazon's AWS platform, specifically their "Simple Workflow Service" and more recently Step Functions. I know what you're going to say: "wait, you just said you had no experience with workflow software." And maybe you're right, but the truth is I never really considered applying it to processes involving human workflow, but more as a way to ensure with a good deal of certitude that a automated process either completed successfully, or if it didnt then I would know that too. Too many times with things like importing data in a business to business setting stuff is just missing or fallen through the cracks when a server hiccups, and without something like that there is no way to know what you needed to retry.
In any event, has anybody considered trying to hack the Designer in process maker to design these serverless type functions? Here is the simplest example of one:
Because, the designer for Step functions sucks. Logic Apps in Microsoft Azure are a little better, but not by a lot.
In AWS the state machine itself is called the Step Function, and each "node" is called an State which can be as simple as an API call for an REST resource to running a Lambda function (serverless python or nodeJS code). I also have experience with Microsoft's platform, in Azure they're called Logic Apps.
Approaching it from a different tact, has anyone considered making like a... cloud exporter/compiler? Where instead of using PM just as a designer, you use PM as normal but your logic and processes run in a serverless setting for scalability and triggered by an API gateway? AWS uses a JSON-based structured language they call States Language. It's not quite how PM stores data, but its not Greek either.