I’ve been teasing for a while about my Atlas-base Windows Workflow designer for a
while. Its just that although I had some basic functionality working months
ago – it has taken me this long with all the other consulting and training I’ve been
doing to actually get things working to what I consider a beta level.
So with this post I am announcing beta 1 of the Atlas Workflow Designer. I am
putting up source code – but I am releasing it under the MIT license (which basically
means you can use it for any purpose – even commercial – you just have to leave my
copyright notice in it so I get credit :)).
Any bug reports are welcome – although code reviews are not ;-). Personally
I am happy with the functionality – I am not necessarily happy with the way all
the code is factored. Some of it to be perfectly honest is a total hack.
Mostly in the Atlas based “class” that runs the designer in the browser. There
is some serious refactoring that needs to get done there, which I will be working
on for future releases. Also – the persistence layer (saving the xaml and rules
to the database) isn’t as layered as I’d like (I have plans for a workflow persistence
provider so different stores can be easily plugged in). Also the coupling between
the javascript and the service is a little tight – but that may be unavoidable in
this particular application.
The biggest thing to get working better is the property grid and rules. As of
now – all you can put in for rules is “true” (yes – I know this sucks – but making
a near full-featured rule editor in the browser is another big task).
There also may be some other property types that cause trouble – but I think
that is mostly taken care of.
You can put bug reports here or email them to me – but remember – I am giving this
code away essentially – I am not charging you for it ;-). But – if you are someone
in need of consulting with WF (whether with designers or any other issues) please
drop me a line 🙂
I’ll try to post a camtasia of myself using it later so you can get a handle on how
it works – plus there is a slightly weird issue in Mozilla (where you can drop the
activities is pretty funky right now – but pretty much everything else works).
You’ll need SQLExpress installed to get the persistence layer to work correctly (or
import the mdf into SQLServer and change the connection string in the web.config).
Anyway – enjoy – hopefully this will be useful.