Workflow in v1.4 Alfresco

[dcaruana]

There are claims that one of our product weak points is Workflow even though workflow in conjunction with rules and actions has been a unique feature of the Alfresco product since first release.

Although our current workflow offering is very simple to setup and administer (which is liked very much), its simplicity means there are some limitations as to the complexity of business process that can be defined.  So, to address this, Alfresco 1.4 will introduce advanced workflow capabilities laying the foundation for our WCM offering currently in development, as well as enhance the document management capabilities we have today.

Advanced workflow really means having the ability to declaratively express business processes of arbitrary complexity, user task allocation & inbox support and workflow tracking.  We've chosen to embed the JBoss jBPM workflow engine (although others may be plugged-in, Alfresco style) which will be tightly integrated with the Alfresco Web Client and Content Repository services.  Out-of-the-box content-oriented workflow templates will also be provided.

We're just starting the development of this feature where our intent and design is openly available on the Alfresco WIKI; we welcome your comments and feedback at this stage.