Hello,

Thanks again for submitting the d3 feature request!

Feature summary is replicated here:
It would be great if Intalio|BPMS Designer can import XPDL processes designed in other process modelers/designers available in the market, and generate BPEL for the same so that the process can be deployed in Intalio Server.

Feature description is here:
As I understand, Intalio|BPMS Designer uses BPMN notations to design a process. On "Generate Compile BPEL" this proprietary format gets transformed to BPEL which is then deployed to the Intalio Server.

What if I don't want to start the process design from scratch but have a process designed using another BPMN complaint designer but stored physically in XPDL format and I want to deploy the same in Intalio.

Now it would be great if Intalio|BPMS Designer can import the XPDL processes and generate BPEL for the same so that the process can be deployed in Intalio Server.
Prior discussion thread in the BPMN and Designer forum can be found here.

Shao.

Hello,

The XPDL Import feature is available for subscription!

From the project description:

The support will be provided in two phases:

- Milestone 1: Intalio|Designer will import XPDL and map to BPMN, focusing on business process semantics. Default UI layout will be adopted. The Designer will save the imported business process in standard Intalio formats.
- Milestone 2: Intalio|Designer will make best effort to translate and preserve the UI layout information captured in the imported XDPL file.

Users are expected to review and modify imported business processes and workflows per the execution semantics supported by Intalio|BPMS before they can be deployed into Intalio|Server for execution.
Please contact or visit the d3 feature to sponsor the project if you want to help accelerate its development.

Thanks,

Shao.

hello Shao,

Perhaps we should go a lot further. Import and export in XPDL and any other format you want.

The people who really need to be process driven are the small and medium sized businesses, charities and the like, who do not have the resources to spend on the expensive task of mapping processes, but would benefit from execution efficiencies gained by taking a process driven approach.

I cannot see these potential customers of Intalio, making any real comitments to any application unless they can move all that hard work to another application if they are not happy with what is on offer.

I believe that Intalio has a natural and potentially large customer base of people who want an open source "Process Repository" and "Process Development Environment" to be worked on by those that control and create the business processes, namely and sorry to say it, business people.


We must however ask ourselves why those business people which can afford to develop processes, are all still using Visio and word to develop and document business processes? and with the answer, build a process development environment that is so compelling that they would give the current applications up.


Given that processes are expensive to elicit, I truly believe that Intalio has an opportunity to make a real difference by becoming THE Process Development environment and be the interface of choice for both commercial and non comercial organisatons in the soon to emerge "Open Process" community.

Strategically, focusing on becoming a go between execution engines, it would help Intalio become an indispensable partner by placing itself in the layer above the execution server as a system agnostic truly open environment.

/Ricardo

Hello Ricardo,

Thanks for sharing your thoughts!

Intalio's interest is to provide an end-to-end BPM solution, from design time environment to run time engine and administration utilities. Our vision is to become the leading open source Business Process Platform (BPP) vendor which encompasses the core BPM product and best-of-breed open source applications and middleware which power the services that business processes orchestrate. To make this more concrete, our next release (5.3) will include integration with Alfresco ECM, Liferay portal, and Drools business rule engine which we will preview at our upcoming User Conference.

That said, there are several points in your post that we wholeheartedly agree. For example, in addition to XPDL import, we are open to support XPDL export which another user has submitted as a D3 project.

A similar Visio import project has been submitted as well.

If sufficient interest and sponsorship exist for these projects, we will get them done!

Regarding your business process repository idea: we have been researching such a feature and will soon publish some ideas for feedback.

Shao.