Portals Talk

Workflow with Liferay Portal

2011-11-29T08:09:00.001-05:00

Liferay Portal includes a workflow engine called Kaleo. In Greek, this word means "called ones," which is appropriate for a workflow engine that will be calling users to participate in a process that has been designed for them.

Kaleo workflow allows a user to define any number of simple to complex business processes/workflows, deploy them, and manage them through a portal interface. Those processes have knowledge of users, groups, and roles without writing a single line of code—it only requires the creation of a single XML document.

Installation

Liferay's Kaleo workflow engine ships with CE versions of Liferay. If you have EE or if you have uninstalled it, the plugin can be installed through the built-in plugin repository. The name is kaleo-web, and you'll find it in the list of web plugins. Installing the plugin will add a number of new options to the Control Panel.

My Workflow Tasks
Workflow Configuration
My Submissions
Workflow

There is one default workflow that is bundled with the kaleo-web plugin: Single Approver Workflow. This workflow requires one approval before an asset can be published. One of the conveniences of using Liferay's workflow engine is that any roles that are specified in the workflow definition are created automatically when the definition is deployed. This provides a level of integration with the portal that third party engines cannot match. The Single Approver Workflow contains three roles each with different scopes. The scope of each role can be easily deduced by their names - Community Content Reviewer, Organization Content Reviewer, and Portal Content Reviewer.

Lansa Integration with Portals becomes more secure

2009-08-10T22:02:00.002-04:00

The Lansa WAM integration for Essential Enterprise Portal has had a security boost. New security features include:

Support for Triple DES and AES encryption.
Data passed between portal and WAM is now encrypted.
Encryption/Decryption libraries written for Lansa Integrator help secure both sides of the communication.
Session timeouts now customizable through properties in Lansa.

With security on the web being an issue of ever increasing performance, these security enhancements will help to ensure that Rippe & Kingston's portal and Lansa integration keeps up with modern security models and technologies, while continuing to provide a smooth integration between two distinct services.

Portal Re-development moving forward.

2009-02-17T16:32:00.001-05:00

The Essential Enterprise Portal re-development is moving closer to a full release utilizing the Jetspeed 2 open source portal. Here is a re-cap of what is completed and underway at this stage of the re-development project:

Finished

News Portlet re-design and conversion to JSR 168 portlet standard.

Rippe WAM Portlet for Lansa integration converted to JSR 168 portlet standard.

Essential Portlet application developed to contain the new applications.

Database conversion utility built to migrate from verion 1.5 of the portal to the new database schema.

5250 emulation written to JSR 168 portlet standard.

Currently Underway

Convert The Essential Database Browser Portlet to JSR 168 portlet standard.

Re-design of the document repository portlet to JSR 168 portlet standard.

Visual theme designer to be introduced in Version 2 of Essential Enterprise Portal.

Portlet Generator to be re-designed for Version 2 of Essential Enterprise Portal.

First deployment of Version 2 of the Essential Enterprise Portal is being built and targeted for our 1SYNC portal.

For more information on the Essential Enterprise Portal, send an email to Brad Gardner or visit the Rippe & Kingston Website.