perl-workflow-devel

[Perl-workflow-devel] Workflow Visualization

[Ivan P. <iva...@gm...>]

Hi All,

I don't know if devel list is right place for my question, but I don't
know any other place where to post it.

Here is my problem. In our request management software, we would like
to give end-user an opportunity to modify request workflow according to
his company needs. There would be some kind of form with predefined
actions and conditions lists, editable states, etc. We are actually thinking
about it, so let's skip modification process for now and let's go further.
After request modification, it will be good to show our user his new
workflow, and show it in obvious, graphic way. We want to show him a
picture with his new workflow.
So my question is about drawing such pictures. Have anyone done such
workflow visualizations already?

PS: I tried to use graphviz tools for workflow visualization, but I
wasn't satisfied with the result (alignment is awful, lines and text
are crossing each other). See attachment.

--  
Best regards,
Ivan Paponov                                                  
iva...@gm...

Re: [Perl-workflow-devel] Workflow Visualization

[Alexander K. <ak-...@cy...>]

Hi Ivan,

On Fri, Dec 12, 2008 at 05:14:06PM +0300, Ivan Paponov wrote:
> I don't know if devel list is right place for my question, but I don't
> know any other place where to post it.

Sure looks like the right place.

> After request modification, it will be good to show our user his new
> workflow, and show it in obvious, graphic way. We want to show him a
> picture with his new workflow.
> So my question is about drawing such pictures. Have anyone done such
> workflow visualizations already?

Yes, but ...

> PS: I tried to use graphviz tools for workflow visualization, but I
> wasn't satisfied with the result (alignment is awful, lines and text
> are crossing each other). See attachment.

... we used GraphViz, too. Works for us. Sure, it is sometimes not
particularly beautiful, but it's enough for the user to recognize
the structure.

We also thought about the other direction that you described and
were thinking about using business process modelling software, where
users can actually do that in a graphical way. Maybe that would be
another option, trying to export the workflow into such a format
(I believe BPML is the standard one, and it is XML, too) and see
if a (free) business process modelling software can draw a decent
graph of it.

Cheers,
  Alex
-- 
Dipl.-Math. Alexander Klink | IT-Security Engineer |    a....@cy...
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