Galaxia Workflow Engine

Posted by Thomas Krepkowski 29 Oct 2005 16:07 GMT-0000

Hi !

> I just wanted to let you know that I'm working on extending Galaxia to e-groupware. Most part of the code will remain the same. The biggest change will be a GUI to be able to generate the activities code automatically, so no knowledge of PHP would be required. This extensions could also be usefull for the TikiWiki project, so if anybody has any ideas on the subject let's discuss them on this forum.

Has there something happened to integrate his work into TikiWiki?

Posted by jdriscoll 17 Nov 2004 15:51 GMT-0000

I'd really like to hear about your experience using Galaxia and your stategy for developing workflow content.

I have got the lame CD library example workflow running. It obviously demonstrates the enormous potential of Galaxia/Tiki, which you evidently have succeeded in harnessing for the workflows you mentioned.

What I am missing as a next step is how to move beyond "activity complete" (instead of "thank you for your order" or whatever) and the list of potential activities might be completed.

I need pages that show the requests I can make (e.g. time off), pages of requests to process for various roles (e.g requests for time off a manager need to approve/reject), reports pages (e.g. time out chart).

Just a high level view of how you did time off tracking or the weekly worksheet would be very helpful to me and others.

Posted by Luis Henrique Fagundes 17 Nov 2004 20:21 GMT-0000

Galaxia is very powerful, but it's power has not yet been explored as it should. Making it a module might reflect the poor integration with rest of Tiki we have now.

Instead, why don't we create a mod type "workflow"? This would incite people to share the XMLs of the workflow they do. We could have workflows to manage lots of things in Tiki like create users, moderate tiki objects (forums, image galleries, wiki pages, etc) creation, approve many actions common users can't do (send newsletter), etc. Tiki would have several administration profiles based on which workflows you use. If we use it more and share, Galaxia can gradually blend into Tiki.

Posted by Marc Laporte 20 May 2005 19:31 GMT-0000

> Marc, in tiki-devel list you talked about this, but you didn't say something about Galaxia precisely. What do you think?

The only reason why Galaxia was considered to go to mods is because it is not widely used. I agree with lfagundes that Galaxia's "power has not yet been explored as it should"

I did not think Galaxia should become a mod for 1.9 (and it has not). In general, I do not like the idea of removing existing (re: actively developped and working) features from Tiki to move to mods. However, for the future, as the mods feature evolves, it could become a place where features mature before they join the main codebase.

Again, I agree with lfagundes, I think the most important is to "incite people to share the XMLs of the workflow they do". As Galaxia become widely used, moving it to mods will no longer be considered.

> Just a brief list of current processes we deployed/coded/studied using Galaxia:
>
> - Managing employees as users in Tiki (adding a file gallery for each one, a CV, etc.)
> - Filling a weekly worksheet with the time expended in each project.
> - Requesting holidays and tracking of holidays left per year.
> - Managing a whole project: creating the project, categorizing it, and gathering all the related info in the Intranet, add its documentation templates...

Great! Can you share these?

Best regards,

M 😉

Posted by greggg 22 Sep 2006 11:03 GMT-0000

Hey miguel

Was reading your note on your process you deved

Managing a whole project: creating the project, categorizing it, and gathering all the related info in the Intranet, add its documentation templates...

That is exactly what I've been looking for have you got any tips for me?

> Why Galaxia should be ripped off TikiWiki as a mod? I know you can install it later, but IMHO is step backwards.
>
> Galaxia is the most powerful tool in TikiWiki!!!
>
> We could live without Maps. But if someone couldn't, he still could code Maps using Galaxia (Yes, you can)
>
> I'm not saying "don't do mods", I'm just saying: "Galaxia is not a mod"
>
> And I guess I deserve more than an award for using it 😀
>
> Just a brief list of current processes we deployed/coded/studied using Galaxia:
>
> - Managing employees as users in Tiki (adding a file gallery for each one, a CV, etc.)
> - Filling a weekly worksheet with the time expended in each project.
> - Requesting holidays and tracking of holidays left per year.
> - Managing a whole project: creating the project, categorizing it, and gathering all the related info in the Intranet, add its documentation templates...
>
> and I can think so many more...
>
> I will make sure the mod system allows me to carry all this work to the next version before moving to 1.9 😑
>
> Marc, in tiki-devel list you talked about this, but you didn't say something about Galaxia precisely. What do you think?

Posted by Marc Laporte 20 May 2005 19:12 GMT-0000

> And now I've finally found and tried Galaxia on Tiki 1.9. I was impressed with it, but couldn't get it to generate graphs, so now I'm downloading 1.8.5 to see if it's a bug introduced with the new release.

Please let use know about the graphs. Also, please see: GraphEngine

Posted by Georger Araujo 20 May 2005 19:28 GMT-0000

I guess I found a BUG in tikiwiki/lib/Galaxia/src/ProcessManager/GraphViz.php.
Running on Windows, actually. My environment: Apache 1.3.27, PHP 4.3.11, MySQL 4.1.11, TikiWiki 1.8.5, Graphviz 2.2.1.
The bug prevents Graphviz from generating new graph files after modifying something in a process, e.g. an activity.
The root cause of the problem is that on Windows folder names can have spaces. My Apache root folder, for example, is C:/Arquivos de programas/Apache Group/Apache.
To make matters worse, Graphviz is installed in the C:\Arquivos de programas\ATT\Graphviz folder.
This led to the following command line getting cooked by Galaxia:

C:/Arquivos de programas/ATT/Graphviz/bin/dot -Tpng -o c:\arquivos de programas\apache group\apache\htdocs\tikiwiki\lib\Galaxia/processes/Ferias_10/graph/Ferias_10.png c:\arquivos de programas\apache group\apache\htdocs\tikiwiki\lib\Galaxia/processes/Ferias_10/graph/Ferias_10

I got the following error:
Error: dot: can't open c:\arquivos
Error: dot: can't open de
Error: dot: can't open programas\apache
Error: dot: can't open group\apache\htdocs\tikiwiki\lib\Galaxia/processes/Ferias_10/graph/Ferias_10

All because there are space characters mixing the external command and its parameters. I changed the image_and_map function in GraphViz.php and now it looks like this:

function image_and_map($format = 'png') {
if ($file = $this->saveParsedGraph()) {
$outputfile = $file . '.' . $format;
$outputfile = '"'. $outputfile . '"'; //Georger

$outputfile2 = $file . '.' . 'map';
if(!isset($this->graph'directed')) $this->graph'directed'=true;
$command = $this->graph'directed' ? $this->dotCommand : $this->neatoCommand;
$command = '"'. $command . '"'; //Georger
$file = '"'. $file . '"'; //Georger
$command .= " -T$format -o $outputfile $file";

@`$command`;

$command = $this->dotCommand;
$command.= " -Tcmap -o $outputfile2 $file";
@`$command`;
@unlink($file);
return true;
}
}

Now my command line is like this:

"C:/Arquivos de programas/ATT/Graphviz/bin/dot" -Tpng -o "c:\arquivos de programas\apache group\apache\htdocs\tikiwiki\lib\Galaxia/processes/Ferias_10/graph/Ferias_10.png" "c:\arquivos de programas\apache group\apache\htdocs\tikiwiki\lib\Galaxia/processes/Ferias_10/graph/Ferias_10"

And my graphs show up fine 😀
Please consider merging this in the official source tree. I suppose there are more people out there running TikiWiki on Windows with spaces in their folder names. Regards,

Georger

> Hi,
> I have been requested to seek and implement an open source workflow solution at my company. I looked at some Java-based solutions, but they're either too complex, or too heavy, or too incomplete.
>
> I thought I had finally gotten somewhere when I stumbled upon JaWE2Openflow (http://www.cignex.com/site/OpenSource/jawe2openflow/index_html). It's a solution based on Zope/Plone, OpenFlow (the same open source workflow engine on which Galaxia is based) and JaWE (a VERY GOOD WfMC-compliant worflow process editor, DEFINITELY worth looking at). It was simpler, lighter and more standards-compliant than other solutions, but unfortunately didn't prove flexible enough for my needs. As I'm not a Zope expert, it could be my lack of knowledge, but I'm largely confident it's not the case.
>
> And now I've finally found and tried Galaxia on Tiki 1.9. I was impressed with it, but couldn't get it to generate graphs, so now I'm downloading 1.8.5 to see if it's a bug introduced with the new release.
> I have yet to find if it's what my company is seeking, but from what I've saw from my 1.9 deployment and the documentation, it might be just what I'm looking for - with the added benefit of being LAMP-based.
>
> I'll let you know as it develops. Great work!
>
> Georger
>
> > Hello,
> >
> > This forum is intended to become the central hub for all Galaxia related discussions. Galaxia is used in Tiki but also in several other leading PHP CMSs or groupwares.
> >
> > Until now, all Galaxia users/developers have worked in isolation (sort of). So let's get all the action here below!
> >
> > Please use the watch feature to receive a notice of new posts.
> >
> > Thanks!
> >
> > M 😉