Hi all,
My process is chaining several xforms together to create a multiple pages formular.
Unfortunately , users cannot go back from one form to the other.
Would it be possible to implement a "back button" to enable users to go back to a previous form ?
Hope you can help me,
Many thanks in advance,
Best Regards,
Nicolas

If we are talking about business-context "back-button", i.e. users to be able to go back, amend some form and re-submit it than this looks more like business-logic relative handling. Thus requiring some loops in the business process itself.

I guess that's what you intended, otherwise internet browser back button would be enough. The difference is that in this case we are talking about read-only movements back and forth.

You see, the simplification of chained workflow tasks might delude into perception of simply pages/screens sequence, but behind that is actually bpel with its tasks. Hence "go back" screen-wise actually means go back bpel-wise.

What I'd suggest is to add some handler after each PA task which will assess some field and based on value go back in some point. You may want to check with our process experts to see for sugested solutions.

Any other suggestions?

Hi Oleg,
Many thanks for you clear answer.
1) You are right : I need to implement the "back"-logic in my process. Has anybody already implemeted a "back"-logic with chained Xforms ?
2) I am still willing to implement a new "back" button on the xform manager so that my users could either click and "complete" to go to the next page or on "back" to go to the previous one. Any ideas on how to do that ?
Thanks for your precious help,
Nicolas

Hello Nikolas

I've asked our process experts if they have something on your 1st question, let's see what they say.

Concernig second one, looks like you have some kind of wizard, like you want to have a sequence of forms with possibility to step back. Is that right to say those forms are working as a group, i.e. the last one commits the data? If no, i.e. commits would happen before the last form then another question: do you have to handle some other bpel task(s) in between of forms?

You'r welcome,
Oleg

Hi Oleg,
Thanks for your answer,
I am looking forward to receiving your business experts' feedbacks regarding point 1.
Concerning point 2, you right, I have some kind of wizard with several chained xforms (working as group) with a commit at the end. I would like to let my users going back during the wizard to correct some fields if necessary. Any ideas how to add the "back" button during the wizard ?
Thanks,
Regards,
Nicolas

If you really are stepping back in a business process, then the fail and compensation approach is mandated. You have successfully completed tasks; subsequently discovered that they need to be undone/redone. Take very great care of scope when doing compensation with Intalio. The specification of the fail/compensation must be done explicitly in the BPMN.

If you want to gather information from a single user at a single point in the process through a number of forms, native XFORMS supports this very well but Intalio Designer's form designer does not. Hacking the XFORMS definition produced by the Designer results in code that cannot be maintained through the designer. Attempting to use the business process/workflow logic of BPEL4PEOPLE to develop a wizard familiar to MS Office users is unlikely to get a satisfactory result in performance or usability. Help is at hand as you can follow the replacement user interface path ... using full Orbeon capabilities; native XFORM development; General Interface or any UI tool that communicates with SOAP/HTTP.

David

Here's reponse regarding #1 I got from our guru process expert Rick Geneva:
=== quote =====
9 times out of 10 I question the use of chained execution. Most often what the user is looking for is a few pages with a forward/back button. Chained execution should only ever be used when you really need to interact with the process. Otherwise, it’s a series of forms that have a start point and an end point. The process engine never needs to be involved for this type of behavior. Instead, they can use an xforms switch tag, which changes view when they hit forward and backward.

If you really really really must use chained execution, it’s all about the BPMN diagram. So the question might actually be “how do I do BPMN”.
=== unquote =====

By " an xforms switch tag" Rick means this. This is xform customization, ie as David justifiably says you cannot prepare such form in Intalio Designer, but will have to "hack the XFORMS definition produced by the Designer".

The good news that it migh be not that much difficult. I'd suggest to prepare a long form containing all inputs, like every next form below previous. Than take this long form and put into xforms source code couple of <switch> elements deviding it to lesser forms. Each <case> element within this <switch> would contain two buttons - back & next which will toggle respectively to prev or next <case>. This way you should be good also, being able to save any state of wizard with workflow button "Save" - the data already input by user will be stored and ready for retrieval at any later call to finish wizard.

Oleg