What is AlphaFlow?

AlphaFlow was designed from the beginning to be as simple, flexible and customizable as possible. The basis is an activity based workflow concept. It's fully integrated into Plone and supports a wide range of Workflow patterns described on the Workflow Patterns Homepage. Content types can easily connected to workflow process instances like portal types, user permissions etc. AlphaFlow comes with its own XML based process definition language. Workflows process definitions can be assigned per instance level rather than per class or portal type level (like in DCWorkflow).

Process definitions contain activities like notifications, decisions or tasks. An instance of a process definition is an individual object with a different amount of work items including different states. Just to note, that the activity instances are called work items, because the most users can visualize work items better than activity instances.

Documentation

Manual (HTML)

http://static.gocept.com/alphaflow/manual

Manual (PDF)

http://static.gocept.com/alphaflow/manual.pdf

Downloads

AlphaFlow 1.0.3

Changes since 1.0.3

   - TALES expressions got a new global variable: alphaflow. It contains
     currentUser and systemUser (expression="alphaflow/currentUser")

   - pingCronItems and the restartHelper are now commiting transactions after
     each processed workitem. Set ENABLE_ZODB_COMMITS to False to disable.

   - Plone 2.5 compatibility: fixed some lines of the user
     authentication code to work with the new PlonePAS

   - Improved dynamic role cache to be more conflict tolerant.

   - Improved uninstaller: removing catalog index, dcworkflows, formcontroller
     actions and skin layers.

Changes since 1.0.2

    - Updated the reference to 'toPortalTime' so that AlphaFlow becomes
      compatible to Plone 2.1.2. 
    - Changed route and gate work items to reflect the new work item
      generation model. 
    - Added an additional very visible status message that remains sticky on
      a content object when the assigned workflow is fallen out.
    - Added mode 'delayed-discriminate'. See manual for details.
    - Fixed changed API in 'runAsSystemUser' implementation.
    - More general fix for FTP/WebDAV integration. Ignoring NullResources
      on a much higher level now.
    - Fixed Bug in documentation: "viewUrlExpression" should have been
      "view_url_expression" in ALF.
    - Made getActivityTitleOrId() more failure tolerant when workflow
      definitions change over time.
    - Refactored creation of work items: Activities are now factories and are
      able to generate multiple work items at once.

Changes since 1.0.1

    - Updated documentation.
    - Added statistical summary in the workflow manager overview.
    - Cleaned up the "instances" tab in the ZMI. The tool buttons are gone now,
      you can filter by workflow instance status and have a better table view.
    - Added new tab "tools" in the ZMI. It features the old tool buttons from
      the instances view and two new tools: restart helper and bulk dropin.
    - Introduced some AlphaFlow-specific exceptions to not confuse normal
      application exceptions with workflow specific exceptions.
    - Fixed Bug 2897: Expanding users from groups for assignment of users
      did not work.
    - Fixed Bug 3047: Errors that occured while triggering alarm work items
      did not record traceback in the event log.
    - Fixed bug that disallowed using multiple configuration work items
      responsible for different activities within a single workflow. (# 2934)
    - Removed artificial system user "alphaflow_system_user". Using the
      AccessControl.SpecialUsers.system user now.
    - Added italian translation. Thanks to Fabrizio Reale for the work.
    - Fixed FTP functionaly for AlphaFlow-aware content types.

To get a list of all AlphaFlow releases go to http://ftp.gocept.com/AlphaFlow

Requirements

• Zope 2.7 or 2.8
  
• Plone 2.1

Mailinglist

Send and email with the subject "subscribe" to alphaflow@lists.gocept.com to subscribe to the AlphaFlow mailinglist.

Graphical Workflow Editor

Check out our project page for the graphical workflow editor of AlphaFlow.

Acknowledgements

This workflow engine was inspired by DCWorkflow and OpenFlow. Thanks for those great products.

Further Information

If you would like to get more information contact:

Christian Theune (ct@gocept.com) or Christian Zagrodnick (cz@gocept.com)