orchestrating document and media management using · pdf fileorchestrating document and media...

Orchestrating Document

and Media Management

using CMIS

Technical Note - Integrating ActiveVOS with Alfresco

CMIS Services

AN ACTIVE ENDPOINTS TECHNICAL NOTE

© 2009 Active Endpoints Inc. ActiveVOS is a trademark of Active Endpoints, Inc. All other company and product names are the property of their respective owners.

2009

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Copyright © 2009. Active Endpoints, Inc. of 59

Content Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 3

Demonstration Scenario ................................................................................................. 3 About Content Management Interoperability Services (CMIS) ...................................... 4 About Alfresco ................................................................................................................ 4

ActiveVOS and CMIS Orchestration Overview ..................................................................... 6 UpdateRepositoryCatalog.bpel ....................................................................................... 7 Initiate Review Process ................................................................................................... 7 Get Directory Listing Process .......................................................................................... 8 Move Reviewed Doc Process .......................................................................................... 9 Alfresco Approval Group Process.................................................................................... 9

Demonstration Environment Setup and Configuration ..................................................... 10 Installation .................................................................................................................... 10 Update cmis-ws-context.xml file .................................................................................. 10 Create Alfresco ActiveVOS Project Spaces .................................................................... 11

Obtaining the Repository Id ..................................................................................... 15 Obtaining Space Ids ................................................................................................. 18

Setup and Deployment of ActiveVOS Processes ........................................................... 21 Step 1 - Download AlfrescoDemo project file .......................................................... 21 Step 2 - Deploy Workflow Processes ....................................................................... 29 Step 3 – Configure alfresco-config.xml file .............................................................. 32 Step 4 – Schedule the Initiate Review Process ........................................................ 33

Running the Demonstration Environment......................................................................... 37 Pre-requisites ................................................................................................................ 37 Testing Process ............................................................................................................. 37 Group Approval Process ............................................................................................... 42

Summary/Conclusion ........................................................................................................ 45 About Active Endpoints ..................................................................................................... 45 Appendix A - ActiveVOS Installation .................................................................................. 46

Step 1 – Run the ActiveVOS Designer Installer ....................................................... 47 Step 2 – Launch ActiveVOS Designer ....................................................................... 48 Step 3 – Configure the Embedded ActiveVOS Server .............................................. 50

Appendix B - Installing Alfresco ......................................................................................... 55 Step 1 – Download Alfresco 3.2 Community Edition ............................................... 55 Step 2 – Run Alfresco Installer ................................................................................. 55 Step 3 – Launch alf_start.bat ................................................................................... 57 Step 4 - Verify alfresco is running ............................................................................ 59


Introduction

Demonstration Scenario Document management systems typically offer the ability to invoke a

workflow on a pre-existing document or upon publication of the

document or media in the document repository.

Document-centric approaches have limitations. Such workflows tend to

be proprietary in nature and typically constrained to activities that can

only take place within the confines of a document repository. In most

implementation advanced capabilities such as parallel threads of

execution of the workflow is not possible.

When documents and media originates outside a document repository

and need to be handled by systems and users a different approach is

needed. As such a process (i.e. a workflow) that spans beyond the

confines of a document management system needs to be implemented.

How though does one integrate system and human interaction with

necessary document management functions?

The purpose of this document is to describe the use of ActiveVOS in

conjunction with the Content Management Interoperability Services’

(CMIS) web services interfaces.

The adjoining

demonstration project

combines ActiveVOS with

Alfresco’s CMIS services as

shown here.

The combination of Alfresco

and ActiveVOS leads to

easier integration and

development of solutions

for customers. One of the

key components of the

integration between

Alfresco and ActiveVOS is

the use of the CMIS web

services.


This approach provides content management systems such as Alfresco

with

Enhanced workflow capabilities o Human process governance o SLA monitoring/ escalations

Easier integration with services and applications

Better reporting and process visibility with ActiveVOS BAM/BI functionality

Access to document management for access to document and media content and metadata

About Content Management Interoperability Services

(CMIS) On September 10, 2008 a group of Enterprise Content Management

vendors including EMC Corporation, IBM Corporation and Microsoft

Corporation announced the publication of Content Management

Interoperability Services (CMIS) specification and a collection of

associated schemas, WSDLs, and XML instances. CMIS’s objective is to

define a domain model and set of bindings, such as Web Service and

RESTful AtomPub that can be used by applications to work with one or

more Content Management repositories/systems.

CMIS web services expose a series of vendor independent operations/

functions are exposed via the WSDL (or REST) interface. Through the

use of these services content management solutions such as Alfresco’s

enable access to content and media to applications and processes build

with ActiveVOS. For further information on CMIS, you can follow these

links:

http://www.oasis-

open.org/committees/tc_home.php?wg_abbrev=cmis

http://wiki.alfresco.com/wiki/CMIS

About Alfresco The demonstration orchestration project described herein and the

adjoining ActiveVOS project leverage Alfresco CMIS content

management APIs. Alfresco is a provider of an open source enterprise

content management platform depicted here.

http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/tc_home.php?wg_abbrev=cmis

http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/tc_home.php?wg_abbrev=cmis

http://wiki.alfresco.com/wiki/CMIS


To learn more about Alfresco please visit www.alfresco.com.

http://www.alfresco.com/


ActiveVOS and CMIS Orchestration Overview The demonstration environment includes an ActiveVOS Orchestration

project that you can download from the same location in the In-Depth

section where you found this document.

The Import the Alfresco Project section of the orchestration project

describes how to import the project’s content. To view the process

definitions, you can double click within Project Explorer after to see the

visual process representations.

The project contains the content shown here.

<- Alfresco space names <- Workflows to be deployed <- Reference configuration data files for demo <- Deployment files <- Sample data folder <- WSDL interfaces to Alfresco

http://www.activevos.com/indepth.php

http://www.activevos.com/indepth.php


UpdateRepositoryCatalog.bpel

This workflow is responsible for

updating the catalog file

containing the Alfresco

repository space id.

It uses a CMIS getRepositories

operation call to get the main

repository space id from the

Alfresco repository.

Via standard Assign/ Copy BPEL

operations, the alfresco-

config.xml file is updated in the

ActiveVOS catalog.

Initiate Review Process The Initiate Review process

(InitiateReview.bpel) queries the Alfresco

“ready” for review folder. For each

document in folder, it moves each document

to “Under Review” folder in Alfresco. Also it

initiates group review.

This process is scheduled to run periodically.

Refer to Step 4 – Schedule the Initiate Review

Process later in this document for details on

how to configure the process schedule.


Get Directory Listing Process This process (GetDirectoryListing.bpel) is invoked by

the Initiate Review process

“QueryDirectoryOperation” activity.

The “Query” activity invokes an CMIS function to get a

list of files in the “Ready” folder that needs to be

processed.


Move Reviewed Doc Process

This process is invoked by the

Initiate Review process’

“MoveDoc” activity.

It gets the folder ids from the

catalog file.

Based on the group consensus

(Accept or Deny), the file is

moved to either Accepted or

Rejected Alfresco folder using

a CMIS defined operation.

Alfresco Approval

Group Process The Alfresco Group

Approval Process

(AlfrescoGroupApprovalPro

cess.bpel) invoked from the

SendDocToReview activity

of the Initiate Review

Process makes a copy of the


document from the Alfresco folder. A human task is launched for each of

the 3 reviewers (approver1, approver2 and approver3) and a copy of the

same file is sent to each of them.

Demonstration Environment Setup and Configuration This section describes the setup and configuration steps necessary to run

the demonstration environment comprising ActiveVOS and Alfresco.

Installation This demonstration environment described in this document assumes

the following:

1. Windows XP Operating System - The demonstration environment can

be installed on a Linux platform but the steps for this are not

provided in this document. Please contact

[email protected] for assistance.

2. Alfresco Version - General Available (GA) version of Alfresco 3.2

Community Edition.

3. ActiveVOS Version - ActiveVOS 6.2.1 is used to illustrate the

examples.

Appendix A and B respectively describe the steps to download and install

ActiveVOS and Alfresco.

Update cmis-ws-context.xml file

If you are running with ActiveVOS 7.0 or later, as part of the setup, you

need to update “cmis-ws-context.xml” to remove the requirement for

timestamps on the messages.

You will find this file in a directory like

….tomcat\webapps\alfresco\WEB-INF\classes\alfresco

Remove “Timestamp” from wss4jInInterceptor id as shown below

Pre-edit version

mailto:[email protected]


Post edit version

Create Alfresco ActiveVOS Project Spaces The demonstration project relies on the existence of pre-named “spaces”

(or “folders”) within the Alfresco content management repository. From

the Alfresco administrative console GUI, it is easy to configure these

required spaces. From the main Alfresco GUI, using the Navigator, go to

“Company Home” and view entries for “User Homes”. After the initial

installation, this “space” will not have any items as shown below.


Select Import

Point to the ActiveVOS.acp file. This file is included in the

AlfrescoDemo.zip file in the folder “acp” see section


Now do a refresh on the User Homes

And now drill into the ActiveVOS space


At this point, you can delete the ActiveVOS.acp file

When you click on the ActiveVOS space, you should see a folder/

directory structure similar to the following:


Obtaining the Repository Id

As part of the workflows, it is required to obtain the repository Id.

You can get the repository id by running the

UpdateRepositoryCatalog.bpel process

An easy way to do this is the use the ActiveVOS Admin Maintenance

Scheduler.

Logon to ActiveVOS console (http://localhost:8080/activevos)

Goto Admin -> Maintenance -> Scheduling

Click on “Create Schedule” link

http://localhost:8080/activevos


Now enter the appropriate values to define the one time schedule

Name: Alfresco Repository Id

Frequency: Once

Service Name: CatalogUpdatePort

Input Message : contents

<MessageInitiate xmlns="http://activevos.com/jdj/initiate">

<initiate/>

</MessageInitiate>

available from sample-data folder in file InitiateStub.xml


Select “Run Now” to have it execute. If you want to verify the

correct execution of this task, use the ActiveVOS Admin Console

Monitor Process Monitoring Active Processes

And click on the process instance


Obtaining Space Ids

As part of the workflows, you need to have the Alfresco space ids

(identifiers). To discover these values, you can use the Alfresco GUI to

discover the values.


From the Space Navigator, click on Accepted and then, select “More

Actions” & “View Details”


Record these spaceIds for updating the alfresco-config.xml in an

upcoming step.


Setup and Deployment of ActiveVOS Processes Now that the Alfresco components have been configured, you can start

on the configuration of the ActiveVOS workflow components.

Step 1 - Download AlfrescoDemo project file

As part of the example, there is an AlfrescoDemo.zip file

Import the Alfresco Project

At this point, you can import the ActiveVOS projects for the Alfresco

demo.

If you have copied the zip file to a location like:

C:\temp\Afresco\AcitveVOS demo


You can use the Eclipse project import capability to import the project

contents to your ActiveVOS Designer.

Use the File/ Import option


Click on “Open”

Select “Finish”

After the import is completed, you will see


Configure tomcat-users.xml

To modify the tomcat-users.xml file:

Goto the “Server” Tab and select you ActiveVOS Embedded server entry


Right click to bring up the menu and click on “Open”.

You will then see a screen like the following.


Expand “Configure Identify Provider” by clicking on the text

Now you can click on the tomcat-user.xml hyperlink to begin editing of

the identity XML file.

Switch from the “Design” to “Source” view and add the following lines



<user username="approver1" password="approver1" roles="abTaskClient"/>



To the file, You can cut and paste from this word document).

You must restart your embedded server to have these new users take

effect.

To test the users, you can use the ActiveVOS console


Click on “Test” Tab

If the test for approver1 fails, stop and start your embedded server (from

the servers tab).

When the ActiveVOS embedded server has been restarted, test for the

“approver1” id again.


Step 2 - Deploy Workflow Processes

Click on Deploy Icon in ActiveVOS console.

Navigate and select “AlfrescoDemo.bpr” file in the

“../workspace/AlfrescoDemo/deploy” directory

Click Open


And then click on “Deploy”


You can typically ignore the warning messages.

Verifying successful deployment


Step 3 – Configure alfresco-config.xml file

The alfresco-config.xml will contain the Alfresco repository and space ids

as reference values in an xml file.

To edit, this file, launch the ActiveVOS console

(http://localhost:8080/activevos) and navigate to the Catalog/

Resources/ All page


Edit the above file to set the parameters for the Alfresco spaces. Use the

information collected in the Create Alfresco ActiveVOS Project Spaces

section

Click on Update when you have completed the changes.

Step 4 – Schedule the Initiate Review Process

To schedule the Initiate Review process’ execution, an ActiveVOS

schedule task needs to be configured. To do this, launch an ActiveVOS

Console session and navigate to:

Admin Maintenance Scheduling


You should see a screen similar to the following:

When you click on “Create Schedule”, you will see a dialog similar to

following screen


Configure the scheduling task with the following

Name “Alfresco Polling”

Frequency once – we will launch manually; in a production mode,

this could be set to run periodically (e..g 1/minute or 1/hour)

Service Name InitiateStub - if you click on the link “Services”, you

should see a list similar to the following

Input document see AlfrescoDemo/sample-data/

InitiateStub.xml file for contents for Input document


This will be used in the end to end testing of the Alfresco/ ActiveVOS

integration.


Running the Demonstration Environment

Pre-requisites Prior to running the end to end tests, you should have the following

installed and running:

Alfresco mySQL

Alfresco Tomcat application server with Alfresco software

ActiveVOS Designer with embedded server started

Testing Process The testing cycle is detailed below.

Step 1 – Add file to “ready” folder

Use Alfresco console (http://localhost:28080/alfresco )

Enter credentials and click on “Login”

http://localhost:28080/alfresco


If necessary login as “Admin”

Navigate to “Received” folder

Company Home User home ActiveVOS Received

Select “Received” hyper link


Now select the “Add Content” link and follow the prompts to upload

your file.

“Browse” to the file you want to upload.


Step 2 - The Initiate Review process must be scheduled

In the prior section, we configured the scheduler entry for this process.

You can now using ActiveVOS console to have the process execute

immediately.

http://localhost:8080/activevos/scheduling.action

Click the check box next to “Alfresco Polling” and then click on “Run

Now”. This will allow ActiveVOS to detect files and launch the workflow.


The InitiateReview process queries the Alfresco “ready” for review

folder. For each document in folder, it moves each document to “Under

Review” folder in Alfresco. Also it initiates group review.

Group Approval Process

The AlfrescoGroupApprovalProcess.bpel makes a copy of the document

from the Alfresco folder. A human task is launched for each of the 3

reviewers (approver1, approver2 and approver3) and a copy of the same

file is sent to each of them.

To make the approval or deny of the document, each of the human task

reviewers will login to the ActiveVOS inbox by starting a web browser

session ( http://localhost:8080/activevos-inbox )

http://localhost:8080/activevos-inbox


Each reviewer (approver1, approver2, approver 3) to enter in their

username and password.

ActiveVOS – WS Human Task

© Active Endpoints

Approve or Reject Document

Alfresco Document


After 2 acceptances (Approved = true) or 2 Denies (Approved = false) are

received (from a possible 3 participants), the ActiveVOS process would

then launch the “move document” workflow

The document is then moved from Under Review folder to either

Accepted or Denied folder.

Check movement of file on Alfresco portal to appropriate folder by

logging into the Alfresco Console (e.g. http://localhost:28080/alfresco )

and navigating to the appropriate space

Company Home ActiveVOS Accepted



Summary/Conclusion Integration between ActiveVOS and Alfresco is simple via the CMIS web

service interface or REST API. The examples provided show the ease of

quick integration between the Alfresco repository and simple standards

based graphical process workflows within the ActiveVOS product set.

Please feel free to contact Active Endpoints for more details on the

integration.

About Active Endpoints Active Endpoints’ (www.activevos.com) ActiveVOS is the business

process management system (BPMS) that development teams will love.

ActiveVOS empowers project teams to create business process

management (BPM) applications using services, making their businesses

more agile and effective. ActiveVOS promotes mass adoption of SOA-

enabled BPM applications by focusing on accelerating project delivery

time with a complete, affordable and easy-to-use system. Active

Endpoints is headquartered in Waltham, MA with development facilities

in Shelton, CT.

To find out how Active Endpoints can help your business, visit

http://www.activevos.com, call +1 781 547 2900 and press 1 for Sales, or

email us at [email protected].

http://www.activevos.com/

http://www.activevos.com/bpms.php

http://www.activevos.com/bpm.php

http://www.activevos.com/



Appendix A - ActiveVOS Installation To install ActiveVOS download the 30-day evaluation version of

ActiveVOS from the following link: http://activevos.com/download-

trial.php

If you have any issues with the download, please send an email to:

[email protected]

You will receive a license file shortly after Active Endpoints staff contacts

you to learn more about your needs.

The installation of ActiveVOS is straight forward. At the appropriate

time, you will be prompted for your 30 day license key. Again, if you

have any issues with the license key, please contact

[email protected]

When you have completed the installation of the evaluation version of

ActiveVOS, you will have an all-in-one eclipse based environment with

Eclipse 3.4

ActiveVOS plug ins o ActiveVOS Designer

http://activevos.com/download-trial.php

http://activevos.com/download-trial.php




o ActiveVOS embedded server

In memory database (Derby)

The embedded ActiveVOS server will provide you with the execution

environment needed to run the demonstration integration project.

Step 1 – Run the ActiveVOS Designer Installer

After you have downloaded the Windows installer from the link,

Double-click to launch the installer.

You will be prompted for an ActiveVOS license key file. This is typically

emailed to you as a separate attachment after you make your initial

download request. If you did not receive your evaluation license key file

in an email message (please check your junk mail folders first), send an

email to [email protected] asking for assistance.

Upon successful installation of the ActiveVOS software, you will see a

screen similar to the following:



Step 2 – Launch ActiveVOS Designer

Launch ActiveVOS Designer from the ActiveVOS Start Menu created by

ActiveVOS Designer installer.

Next, you will be asked to select a workspace location where to create

ActiveVOS Orchestration Projects. Accept the default for the workspace

name and continue

Select the option “Use this as the default and do not ask again” for

convenience when you launch the ActiveVOS eclipse based tool again.

You can close the welcome screen when it appears and proceed directly

to the ActiveVOS Designer workbench screen.


Step 3 – Configure the Embedded ActiveVOS Server

As part of the ActiveVOS setup, you must configure an instance of the

ActiveVOS embedded server. To do this, click on the “Servers” tab to

bring into focus.

Now with your cursor in the server panel, <right click> to bring up the

“New” option as shown below

When you highlight the blue “New” option, you will have a chance to

select the “Server” option.

When you click on “Server”, you will get the following dialog screen


Select Next


Click on “Next”

Accept the port defaults. As appropriate, if there are port conflicts, you

may need to change these settings.


Click on Finish and you should see a screen similar to the following with

your new ActiveVOS server definition.

You can click on the green Server Start

icon and the ActiveVOS server will startup


A new pane “Console” will display the startup progress.

You will see a message in the console “INFO: ********** ActiveVOS Enterprise Started” when the server has

completed its startup process.

If you click back in the Server tab, you will see

That the server status is now “Started” versus “Stopped”


Appendix B - Installing Alfresco As part of the Alfresco software installation you will perform two main

activities:

Creating Tomcat application server instance with Alfresco software

Create mySQL database instance

These software components will be installed by running the single

Alfresco install wizard.

Step 1 – Download Alfresco 3.2 Community Edition

Download Alfresco 3.2 Community Edition software from

http://wiki.alfresco.com/wiki/Download_Community_Edition.

The file when downloaded should be approximately 370 MB

Step 2 – Run Alfresco Installer

Click/ launch this executable.

http://wiki.alfresco.com/wiki/Download_Community_Edition


After specifying a root directory (e.g. C:\AlfrescoCE3.2) with the exe file,

and accepting the default directories, you will get something like the

following on your drive:

Hints:

1. Ports

To facilitate the construct of this demo, we set the Alfresco ports

to be 28080 (versus the regular 8080) to avoid conflicts with

ActiveVOS.


In addition, you should change the ports (e.g. 8005 -> 28005) in

the Alfresco Tomcat server.xml

This will be located in a directory like

“C:\AlfrescoCE3.2\tomcat\conf”.

2. Remove unnecessary .war and folders

To speed up startup of the Alfresco software, you may want to

consider deleting the following from the from the

C:\AlfrescoCE3.2\tomcat\webapps directory :

mobile.war

studio.war

\mobile directory

\studio directories

Step 3 – Launch alf_start.bat

In the root Alfresco install directory (e.g C:\AlfrescoCE3.2), you will see a

batch file alf_start.bat.

Click/ launch this file and you will create 2 windows:

a) MySQL – default database for alfresco tomcat instance

b) Alfresco tomcat instance


Step 4 - Verify alfresco is running

Start browser session with URL : http://localhost:28080/alfresco


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