alfresco workflow configurable and barcodes

i have a couple of questions on Alfresco.

1. Is Alfresco workflow module, point and click configurable or is programming needed? Can Visio diagrams be used to set workflow?

2. Can Alfresco process 1-D and 2开发者_运维知识库-D barcodes?

Regards

vish

Currently Alfresco workflows can be developed using the JBPM Graphical Process Designer, which produces XML files you directly upload into Alfresco. Be aware of the fact that in the future the default workflow engine of Alfresco will change to be Activiti.

Barcode generation/scanning is not supported by Alfresco.

At the Alfresco Devcon in New York (2010) Neil McErlean did a presentation on the Alfresco Action Framework where he demoed an example of working with QR codes.

The presentation can be found at http://www.slideshare.net/alfresco/custom-action-framework

I am not sure where the source code lives for this customization. So while it can't be done OTB, it is a customization that is possible and has been done as a POC.

More recently, the Activiti workflow engine is the default in Alfresco (though jBPM is still available). There is an Eclipse plugin that can be used to do the initial workflow design graphically (and output BPMN XML files).

However, the BPMN is not useful until it has been manually enhanced with Alfresco-specific features such as the assignee (person or group) for a task, the form to use to display the task, and scripts to create and maintain process and task variables, and/or hook into events triggered during the workflow. Further work may be needed to define the task model (the variables that each type of task needs) and to customise the Share user interface to display the tasks correctly to users. See this article for an example.

So although the initial draft design can be done graphically, detailed programming is also needed. The Alfresco training materials for workflows specifically state that end users cannot create new workflows without assistance from a developer.

The exception is "simple workflows", which don't use BPMN or jBPM, and are simple one-step Accept/Reject decisions that can be created by end users.

You can use whatever BPMN tool as long as it generates an xml BPMN xml output so you can import it into Alfresco activiti