View and Search Process Instances and Tasks

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ajlaferriere
Member II

View and Search Process Instances and Tasks

We are new in going to production with Activiti and need help with end users frustration around searching, viewing and auditing processes/tasks in Activiti.

Complaint from end users:  

"Activiti does not allow you to search for a task or process instance unless you have specifically been assigned a step in the workflow."

  • Is this actually true?
  • Can this be resolved without granting everyone group admin access?
  • What is best practice for teams that might need to jump in and research or work each others tasks/processes?
6 Replies
ryandawson
Alfresco Employee

Re: View and Search Process Instances and Tasks

I assume this is a question about what features are available within a user interface rather than what facilities are available to developers (e.g. to build custom reports). I am guessing that it is about what tasks users can see in the UI features for actioning tasks. I tend to work as admin but wouldn't be surprised if that feature does restrict the tasks that the user sees to those assigned to them or for which they are a candidate (which could be through group membership) or involved, at least as the default view. If a particular group needs to be able to action tasks that ordinarily belong to another group then I would say both groups should be set up as candidates for the task, which would be a matter of changing the definition of that particular process. The attached screenshot might help to illustrate - it's from v1.6 of enterprise (which corresponds to v6 of community) and was taken using an admin user. If it's a question about what facilities are available for reporting then I'd want to ask which version specifically.

mgundrum
Active Member

Re: View and Search Process Instances and Tasks

Thanks Ryan, 

I was about to ask a similar question, but I think you might be hitting on it here, if indeed that is the way to manage running processes from the UI. 

In our environment, we have an IT Support App available to all team members. This App contains 5 or so unique Processes that any team member can initiate. It makes sense that the individual team members will only be able to see work that they initiated or which was assigned to them, however I'm wondering whether someone in a manager role could get the ability to 'oversee' all running and completed processes assigned to all members of their team, and could for example check in on or delegate processes of their subordinates. Is your suggestion that the best way to do this through the UI would be to include the managers as candidate users in each process definition? Will this work so that the manager can view the process all the way through, or only when the candidate task comes around? Thanks again for your insight. 

ryandawson
Alfresco Employee

Re: View and Search Process Instances and Tasks

To be honest I am not sure I was making any one suggestion in particular though I can see how you could get that suggestion from what I said. My main point is that it's hard to help much without knowing which version of Activiti and which UI is at issue. A custom-built app with a custom UI you can get access to the engine's APIs and build the kind of options that I showed in the screenshot. So I was guessing that the complaint might be directed at a particular UI offered with a particular Activiti version.

mgundrum
Active Member

Re: View and Search Process Instances and Tasks

Makes sense. I can't speak to the original post, but I feel my question is related, so I'll keep it here rather than starting a new thread if that seems appropriate.

We're on Enterprise version 1.5.0. We have a few custom tasks created for Kickstart users, but from a UI, user-facing standpoint, everything is as it came out of the box. 

The goal is to give a small set of users a 'manager' view to see all running and completed processes regardless of their assignee, through the UI if possible. We do actually have an option similar to the screenshot you posted labelled 'Tasks assigned to the group IT Support', however that appears to only give results that are both assigned to me (default) AND assigned to the group, which of course returns nothing. Perhaps our group is set up incorrectly. 

The Process screen does not have a similar filter option, although I suppose the Task filter would serve basically the same function. Do you have any suggestions on where we might look to develop this sort of system in our environment? Do let me know if any more background info would be helpful. Thank you!

ryandawson
Alfresco Employee

Re: View and Search Process Instances and Tasks

I think there are a few possible paths.

  1. There is the admin-app - I believe that is available with enterprise 1.5 would let you see all the running instances. The risk is it might give you more power than you want.
  2. There is a custom extension (https://github.com/cijujoseph/activiti-examples/tree/master/aps-task-watchlist-extension) but I think you need at least 1.7 to use that.  is the man to speak to on that if you want to go that route.
  3. It might be that it’s reporting you’re really interested in. If so 1.8 adds more options for that https://community.alfresco.com/community/bpm/blog/2018/02/06/alfresco-process-services-18-available-...
mgundrum
Active Member

Re: View and Search Process Instances and Tasks

This is fantastic, thank you very much!