Now that we know how to create and access our processes in the KIE Workbench, it's time to create a new process using the Web Process Designer. The process we are going to implement is the sprint management process introduced in Chapter 3, Using BPMN 2.0 to Model Business Scenarios. We are going to use this process to learn not only about its specific implementation, but also to cover the different features present in the process editor.
In the previous section, we created the sprintManagement process. The KIE Workbench will now display the Web Process Designer tool, and we can start using it. But before we start implementing the process, let's do a quick revision of the different sections we have in the Web Process Designer as well as its features.
The Web Process Designer's UI contains four main sections: a toolbar at the top, Shape Repository as an accordion panel on the left-hand side, an editing canvas at the center, and a Properties panel as an accordion panel on the right-hand side of the editor. Let's analyze the main purpose of each one of these sections.
The toolbar is the topmost part of the designer panel; it contains different options to allow us quick access to most of the features present in it as well as other useful options regarding the layout of the process and its elements. The toolbar also has some other important features that we are going to cover in this chapter, such as importing process definitions or running simulations. So, feel free to play around with what's in the toolbar until you get used to the options that you have and where they are.
The Shape Repository collapsible panel contains the palette of BPMN 2.0 elements used to construct business processes. In this palette, you will find all of the BPMN 2.0 elements (described in Chapter 3, Using BPMN 2.0 to Model Business Scenarios) grouped according to their type. Sometimes, having all of the available elements in the palette is not the best thing. After you have designed a couple of processes, you will notice that most of the time you are using only a subset of these elements. This is why in the Shape Repository panel, there are two different library sets: Full and Simple. You can switch from one perspective to the other by using the drop-down list present at the top of the Shape Repository panel. There is also a third option called RuleFlow, used to create files with the legacy description language for process definitions in jBPM6, but it is an outdated format that no longer has support in the project, so we will skip it in this book.
At the bottom section of the Shape Repository panel, we'll find the Workflow Patterns panel with some predefined process flow structures to help you design your own processes faster and in a standardized manner.
The editing canvas is perhaps the most important part of the Web Process Designer. It is where we are going to design our processes using the elements present in the Shape Repository panel.
When we drag-and-drop an element from the Shape Repository panel into the editing canvas, the element is added; we can change its position by simply dragging-and-dropping it around the canvas. Each element in the canvas has a context menu that we can access by clicking on the element. Using this menu (shown in the next screenshot with all the different icons that will appear around a task when we click on it), we can do different things such as creating new linked elements without using Shape Repository, changing the type of the element, accessing the process dictionary, editing its associated task form (if we are in a User task), or seeing the portion of BPMN 2.0 generated by the element. Have a look at the following screenshot:
By default, the editing canvas comes with a preloaded Start Event, so you could start writing a process without the need to access Shape Repository at all. Some elements, such as sequence flows, have dockings that you can use to bind those elements to some other shape in the editing canvas.
In the upper-left corner of the editing canvas, we can see the process name, version, and ID. In the north, south, east, and west areas of the editing canvas, we can find little yellow arrows that will only appear when we move the mouse over their region. We can use these arrows to increase or decrease the total area of the editing canvas.
When a BPMN 2.0 element is selected in the editing canvas, its properties are displayed in the right-hand side collapsible panel of the Web Process Designer. This Properties panel is very synced up with the properties supported by jBPM6, and to the greatest extent, to the core BPMN 2.0 specification.
Not all the elements have the same properties set, which is why the Properties panel adapts its content to the element currently selected in the editing canvas. If multiple elements are selected in the editing canvas, only the properties that the selected elements have in common will be displayed. In that case, changing the value of a property will modify the property value in all of the selected elements.
Properties can be of different data types: String, Boolean, complex, and so on. Depending on the type of the property being modified, the Properties panel can display different editors, such as a text area, a checkbox, a pop-up form, and so on.