History of GalaxiaTutorial

Version 6

GalaxiaTutorial

Created by: Stephan Borg, Last modification: 09 May 2004 (00:14 UTC) by Stephan Borg
Pre Requisites
  • Its presumed that you have basic programming knowledge including the assignment and use of variables.
  • PHP will be used for the coding part of workflow generation. If you don't know what PHP is, take a look at What can PHP do?. If you are unfamiliar with PHP, its recommended that you read the PHP Tutorial.
  • Smarty Template Engine will be used for the displaying of information in workflow generation. If you are unfamiliar with Smarty, it is also recommended that you read Codewalkers Smarty Tutorial.

Introduction

Tikipro, has inherited a Workflow Engine from TikiWiki called Galaxia. This engine is quite powerful and easy to use once the basic concepts have been mastered. Rather than give you all the concepts now, I will introduce them throughout the tutorial to help understand their use and context in the scheme of workflow generation.
Ensure Workflow is enabled on your website. If you have the permissions, you can visit Administration / Administer Packages / Features and check the Workflow feature. Click Change Preferences to save your change.

Processes

The first part of creating a workflow is to create a Process. A process is usually the objective of the workflow. Be careful not to confuse a specific Activity with the Process. Some example Processes are:
  • Tracking Employee Holidays
  • Approval for department budget requests
  • Tracking a CD Library

To create our Test Process, open the Workflow / Admin Processes section of Tikipro.
You notice at the top of the page are 4 icons.
ImageImageImageImage
These icons are shortcuts to monitor other parts of workflow generation. For now know that they represent monitoring processes, activities, instances and work items.

In Process Name, enter the title of your process. As an example, we will do Hello World Process.
Optionally in the Description, enter a short description about the process.
Is active? indicates that the process is available for users. Leave this unchecked, as nothing will work while the process is blank.
Now click Create.

Uploading Process XML Files
Just below the Create button are Browse and Upload buttons. Later in the tutorial, we will export our process to an XML file which can be later uploaded here or used on other Tikipro installations.
To use, just Browse to your XML Process file and click Upload to create the process.

List of Processes
Once you've created or uploaded your new process, you'll find it listed at the bottom of the Admin Processess page.
Adjust the Find filter to find your process, if there are a lot of processes in the list - and click Filter to search.

Our Hello World Process should appear in the list.
The checkbox at the beginning is used if you wish to delete the process. Just check the checkbox and press the Delete button. If you do this now, be sure to recreate the process as shown above.

Next is the process name. Click on the process name and you'll find the details are entered in the form above to allow editing of the title or description. Also note the icons have changed as well as the errors shown below This process is invalid:. Don't worry about these for now, as we will get to them later in the tutorial. Click _Update to save changes.

Next column is the Version. As you improve on your processes, you can create new versions to work on while leaving existing users on the previous stable version. Once you are convinced that the updated version is suitable for public use, you can make it the default process. All existing user instances of the previous version will continue to completion and not be affected by the new version. This ensures that your workflow functions correctly during upgrades.

Active indicates if the process is free from errors and available for public use.

Valid is a green or red circle indicating whether the process can be activated or not. This is dependent on whether it has any errors - mentioned above.

Lastly, the Action icons are shortcuts to administer the process's activities, instances and other components.

Click on the first Action icon - activities Image.

Activities

Activities are actions that are performed during your process. By default, a start and end activity are created for you, but these can be renamed or deleted at a later stage.

(TODO - to be continued)
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18 Nov 2005 (17:44 UTC)
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