I intend to use Camunda for my product. While all camunda abilities match with my needs, i have a concern about camunda modeler controlled usage. Following are my needs in modeller
Is it possible to create custom domain specific tasks which i can simply drag-drop during modeling. It should be possible to define custom properties needed by this custom state
Can I somehow control/prevent use of custom java code/scripts by person modeling process. I want to restrict use of only my custom tasks, so that we don't end up with lot of scattered code across processes.
Can experts share views to achieve these targets?
Recently Camunda Modeler (I am using release 1.4.0, published on October 2016) has been extended to allow json template installation, which can meets all of your needs (if I understand them correctly), or at least the most of them.
You may find documentation for templates build here. The documentation is in progress, but what is already published I think it is quite clear. Briefly you have to
list all the elements you want to customise (user tasks, general tasks, service tasks, listeners, links and so on)
find out the json representation (explained in the short documentation) of each element
insert all the jsoned elements in a file (for example: myElements.json)
put the file in a specific modeler folder (see below)
close and restart the modeler
For example if you have installed the modeler in C:\Tools\camunda-modeler\, the folder to publish the file into will be C:\Tools\camunda-modeler\resources\element-templates (note that resources will be already present, but element-templates will not; it will have to be created).
If all will be right the modeler will start without any error and you will find a new dropdown list selector on the right panel (as stated in the documentation) for all the elements for which a template has been defined. Generally you have to classify each templates as either a user task, or a service task, or generic task and so on, so that when you want to use it you have to start from the generic element. For example, if you prepare in the json file 2 templates of kind of user task, say userTask1 and userTask2, if you want to insert in your new process userTask1 you have to
pick up an empty userTask
and choose from the element template selector on the right the voice userTask1, so that the empty user task becomes quickly the userTask1 (with all my custom properties with my default values)
that's it
To sum up, you may build templates with custom id and name (editable), with custom properties (editable or not, or even hidden), with eventual input/output parameters. So you may have default values properties and also tasks with simplified selections or without any selections at all.
You may find good starting examples to build your own templates at this GIT repository.
Hope that is enough to understand.
Related
I have a Django project where I am pulling back a list of tasks. These tasks could be for many projects.
Task1: Project1
Task2: Project2
I really want to be able to group by project, so they all sit together, but the project names are input by the user, so I can't hardcode if statements.
How could I approach this?
You should not hardcode, period.
You really should work on your question skills. Based on the little information you gave, Your problem might be one of the following.
You need to search in your database based on the project name that the user has searched for. You have a few ways to approach this, based on your javascript abilities (in no particular order):
Give the user a list of cards, each of which represents a single project. Once the user clicks on the card, you get the project id, send it to the server and fetch it from the database. You might need to look into frameworks such as React, or Vue for this task even though you can achieve the same with vanilla JS.
Create a simple text field, take the user input, query the input against your database and return the list of results, or tell the user that there is no project by the given name.
Create an advanced text field where the list of projects are suggested based on the input of the user (somewhat like the Google search input)
Create a select dropdown, populated with the names of projects, and allow/force users to select one.
OR, you just need to show all of your tasks but just nest the tasks in their parent projects. The simplest way to achieve this is explained here. The other way (the better way) to approach this is to serialize the projects and add the corresponding array of serialized tasks.
Is it possible to open up all possible states for a work item - essentially removing the state transitions?
I am hoping to use a tool outside of TFS for managing work items and would like to know if it's possible to simply allow all states at any time?
If you want to remove the transitions between work item, you need to customize the work flow.
You change the workflow to accomplish the following objectives:
Add or remove a state, reason, or transition.
Specify a value for field to be applied during a change in state,
reason, or transition..
Specify a custom ACTION to automate field assignments based on a
change in state, reason, or transition.
Detail steps to customize the workflow and more info about it, please refer this Modify or add a custom work item type (WIT) from MSDN.
Moreover, here is a 3rd party extension called TFS Work Item Manager which is an innovative team workload coordination platform that helps you manage your TFS work items in a much more efficient and intuitive way. You can also take a look at it.
I used to implement listing/detail scenarios using wildcard items, meaning that, for the sake of URL, I create a regular item to display the list and then under that node, I create a wildcard item to represent all possible detail pages, like:
/news/*
(i generate a friendly name by code to replace wildcard and produce the full URL such as: mywebsite.com/news/the-meeting-press-release)
Then I create a folder or a bucket of content items somewhere else as my repository. Then I assign same datasource to listing node and wildcard node to give them same repository of content items.
Main reason I want to do this is to use datasources and make navigational nodes (which generate actual pages and URLs) to be separate from Content folder structure. In other words, separation of concerns: navigational items as presentation nodes and content items as my data repository.
This is an easy way to work around master/detail requirements but I always feel guilty about this, it feels like this technique breaks integrity (sitecore links table on database) and design pattern in Sitecore back-end.
For example when I look at Analytics, I get * as name of items, clearly the it feels like aliens to back-end system.
I know this is not a new topic. I have seen threads like this or ideas like Sitecore Pipeline Processor for Virtual Items to implement such requirements.
Is there any best practice about this? Have anyone good example of what is most sitecore-friendly way to implement such pipeline processor? How do you address this issue with wildcards on Analytics?
I'm going to go a different way to Martin here. I have successfully used Wildcards many times for the exact purpose you are suggesting (For an example have a look at http://www.atpworldtour.com/news - all news articles are items in a bucket with a wildcard to resolve the url).
There are 2 options to enabling the page editor.
The news article item becomes the page. In this way, you need a new processor in the httpRequestBegin pipeline that resolves the url to the item and then sets Sitecore.Context.Item to the current item. IIRC you do this by setting one of the pipeline argument properties. This will work fine in the page editor as the context item - the one being edited - is the news article. And then other renderings on the page can just use data sources as needed.
The news article resolves to a Datasource. I have also tried this method. To do this, you need a custom Datasource resolver. I sill used a processor in the httpRequestBegin pipeline so that I didn't have to resolve the Url multiple times for each rendering that needed the datasource. But then in the RenderRendering pipeline I had a processor that detected if I wanted a wildcard Datasource and used the item that had been resolved in the httpRequestBegin processor.
There are pros & cons for each method.
Option 1 is nice and simple. It means that you could use a single wildcard to resolve different "types" of page item as the presentation is on the page item and not the wildcard item, also each item can have its own custom presentation, so Datasources set in the page editor would be unique to an article. That is also a disadvantage in someways. A/B testing becomes more difficult with main article text etc... You are limited to testing article versions.
Option 2 is more flexible in the testing area - you can easily test/personalize parts of the article by changing the Datasource. But you are more limited as the presentation must be set on the wildcard. So renderings that are not part of the main article will have the same content/settings across all news articles.
I was previously in the same boat as you are. The are few issues with wildcard items, like resolving datasources or disability to run a page in Page(Experience) Editor or nested wildcards. Regardless of that, I have used wildcard few times and they do their job.
I've managed to resolve datasources properly, based on URL (see blog post: Automatically resolving correct Datasources for wildcard items based on URL), still did not sort the rest others.
Update: Richard suggests the way of implementing Page Editor below, you may find this helpful
Thus, my answer would be:
I would recommend you to keep classical approach of having a page item for each news item, rather than using wildcards. Content authors would use habitual approach (and page editor) rather that editing datasources somewhere on the content tree in Content Editor. If you configure that properly with templates and standard values - there would minimal hassle to create new news article.
In case if you worry about potential raise of number of news articles - use Buckets along with it (or suggest manual strategy to group them into folders).
I am Using Sitecore 6.6
I believe item:setdefaultworkflow and item:resetdefaultworkflow commands are used to reset the workflow fields on an Item with values set on Standard values.
If not please correct me.
Here is the Path in Core:
/sitecore/content/Applications/Content Editor/Ribbons/Chunks/Workflow/Set Default Workflow
commands are not shown on the Ribbon. How do I use these commands? what is their purpose. Any Help is greatly appreciated.
I am aware of Version >> Fields(Reset)>> then choose the fields to reset with multiple clicks.
I am trying to use these commands if they solve my purpose to reset the Workflow Fields to standard values with a command on Review Tab >> Workflow section with one Click.
As far as I'm aware, these buttons are only visible on __Standard Values items. They are used to assign the workflow that will be used for new versions of that template going forward, or to clear the workflow that has been set (note that items which are already part way through a workflow will still need to finish it before they are no longer associated with a workflow).
The idea is that you assign the workflow to the standard values of templates (or base templates) in your solution, and those settings then get carried through to your content items.
Although you are able to, I'd advise against fiddling with the workflow fields on individual items before you fully understand the purpose of the fields.
For more information, I'd suggest looking at the Sitecore workflow reference document: https://sdn.sitecore.net/upload/sitecore6/60/workflow_reference_sc60orlater-a4.pdf
I'm wondering about documentation to create a simple custom ribbon control for sitecore shell.
The problem i'm trying to address is that Admins should be able to force all subitems recursively to be approved to a certain workflow state (rather than approve each one manually), but we currently don't know any way to achieve that.
To solve this, we want to force items throught the workflow state (triggering the corresponding commands) programmatically, but we need a sane way for admins to interact with this, the sensible option would be a custom thingie in sitecore shell, but we aren't sure how easy is to achieve that.
any recommended readings for this problem?
Though this article claims to be written for Sitecore 5.3, the same steps apply for 6.x as well. Note: it requires access to the SDN: How to create a ribbon button in Sitecore v5.3
The high-level points from the article are:
Create a new class that inherits from Sitecore.Shell.Framework.Commands.Command
Mark the class as [Serializable]. It might not be necessary for simple commands, but add it now so you don't get problems later! Otherwise the button might not work correctly (this is related to pipelines - and the fact that pipelines might be stopped and resumed)
Override Execute() and possibly also GetIcon(), GetHeader(), QueryState(), GetClick(), GetSubmenuItems()
Add a new <command name="…" type="..."> tag to /App_Config/Commands.config file
Log into Sitecore and switch to the core database
Navigate to /sitecore/content/Applications/Content Editor/Ribbons and create (or copy) a command in the desired chunk
Enter your command name (the one from step 4) in the "Click" field (and supply a Header, Icon, Tooltip, etc)