Chapter 13. Document management using Alfresco
This chapter covers
- Learning about Alfresco and how Activiti is integrated
- Introduction into CMIS using Apache Chemistry
- Creating a PDF document from a process and store it in Alfresco
In chapter 1, we talked about the history of the Activiti project and its relation to Alfresco. Alfresco offers a document, web content, and record management solution. Alfresco provides an open source version called Alfresco Community, which we’ll be using in this chapter, and a version with enterprise-level support called Alfresco Enterprise. Activiti is used as a workflow engine to provide review and approval processes for items in the Alfresco repository, including documents.
Document management is a natural fit with BPM and BPMN 2.0 processes because a lot of processes create documents or at least access documents in workflow tasks to provide context. A good example is an order process that results in creating an order document and sharing it with the client who placed the order. In an order process, we want to create a document based on process variables like a list of products with amounts and prices. We also want to store this document for future reference in a document management system like Alfresco, so that it can be found easily.