How to deploy and test a BPMN workflow in WSO2 Business Process Server

This post applies to WSO2 Business Process Server 3.5.1

In my previous post, I have explained on how to create a simple workflow with a Human Task. From this post, I will explain how we can deploy a BPMN process in WSO2 Business Process Server and test that using the default bpmn-explorer that comes with the distribution.

If you have not used the Business Process Server, please visit the product pages of Business Process Server to get a general idea about the product. Also please refer to the documentation of Business Process Server  for more information.

If you have not worked with BPMN workflows, please refer to my previous post to get an idea on how to create a simple workflow. This post assumes that you have followed the above mentioned post and the deployment artifacts have been completed.

BPMN Explorer

The WSO2 Business Process Server comes with a bpmn explorer application for users to easily look at the workflows that are displayed in Business Process Server. Also the default application would list down any of the Human Tasks that are allocated to the current logged in user. The application would also display stats on the workflows that are already been deployed and the active/completed tasks.

You can access the BPMN explorer application using the URL give below.

https://localhost:9443/bpmn-explorer/

Note:

Please note that the above URL is for a Business Process Server that is running locally with no port offset.



As you can see from the above screenshot, the default application gives a comprehensive set of actions/operations for a user.

Lets deploy the sample BPMN workflow we created earlier and look at the information that is given from the above application.

Deploy a BPMN Process

We can use the Management Console of the Business Process Server to deploy the artifact we created earlier.

Note:
For those who are not familiar with the WSO2 Business Process Server, you can access the Management Console using the following URL. Also you can use the default admin creadentials(user name: "admin", password : "admin") to login to the Management Console.

https://localhost:9443/carbon

Once you have logged in to the Management Console, you can upload the BPMN artifact by navigating to the  Process --> Add --> BPMN page.

Once the upload process completes, you should see a log similar to the following.

Also the BPMN process should also be listed under the "List" page.

The BPMN Explorer would also display the deployed workflows. The dashboard gets updated with the workflows that has been deployed and when navigated to the "Processes" tab, you can also see the deployed BPMN workflows.

Testing a BPMN Workflow

As mentioned above in this post, we can use the default BPMN Explorer application to test a workflow that we have created and uploaded to the Business Process Server.

We need to login to the BPMN Explorer application and navigate to the "Processes" tab and click on the "Start" button against the desired workflow.

Then there would be a page that displays all the input parameters we have defined in our workflow. Once we fill in all those values, we can start the process by clicking on the "Start" button.

Since we have defined a Human Task in this sample(which gets assigned to the default admin user), we can navigate to the "My Tasks" tab to see what are the pending Human Tasks that needs the user interaction. 

Once we click on the pending task, we can see more information about that.

If you take a closer look at the above screenshot, you can see that the input values we have given when configuring the Human Task is displayed here. Also we can see the actions that we have defined as a dropdown. The user can select any desired action and complete the Human Task by clicking on the "Complete Task" button. 

The BPMN Explorers dashboards would also get updated to reflect the total number of workflow instances that have been created along with the status of each of them.

Conclusion

We can use the default BPMN Explorer application to test any of the BPMN workflows that are deployed in the WSO2 Business Process Server.