Comprehensive Guide to Activiti 7 Workflow Engine: Concepts, Configuration, Deployment, and Usage

The article begins with an overview of workflow concepts, explaining how workflows automate business processes across various industries and describing typical use cases such as order processing, administrative approvals, and human resources management.

It then introduces Activiti 7, an open‑source BPMN 2.0 workflow engine, outlining its history, core components, and the BPMN standard used for process modeling.

Next, the guide details the development environment requirements (JDK 1.8+, MySQL, Tomcat, IDEA) and shows how to install the Activiti Designer plugin in IntelliJ IDEA.

Configuration files are explained, including activiti.cfg.xml for standalone engine setup and activity-spring.cfg.xml for Spring integration, with examples of datasource and transaction manager beans.

<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans" ...>
  <bean id="processEngineConfiguration" class="org.activiti.engine.impl.cfg.StandaloneProcessEngineConfiguration">
    <property name="jdbcDriver" value="com.mysql.jdbc.Driver"/>
    <property name="jdbcUrl" value="jdbc:mysql:///activiti"/>
    <property name="jdbcUsername" value="root"/>
    <property name="jdbcPassword" value="123456"/>
    <property name="databaseSchemaUpdate" value="true"/>
  </bean>
</beans>

Deployment of a process is demonstrated using the RepositoryService, either by adding individual .bpmn and .png resources or by deploying a ZIP archive.

ProcessEngine processEngine = ProcessEngines.getDefaultProcessEngine();
RepositoryService repositoryService = processEngine.getRepositoryService();
Deployment deployment = repositoryService.createDeployment()
    .addClasspathResource("bpmn/evection.bpmn")
    .addClasspathResource("bpmn/evection.png")
    .name("出差申请流程")
    .deploy();

Starting a process instance is shown with RuntimeService, and task handling (querying personal tasks, completing them) is illustrated using TaskService.

RuntimeService runtimeService = processEngine.getRuntimeService();
ProcessInstance pi = runtimeService.startProcessInstanceByKey("myEvection");
TaskService taskService = processEngine.getTaskService();
Task task = taskService.createTaskQuery()
    .processDefinitionKey("myEvection")
    .taskAssignee("zhangsan")
    .singleResult();
taskService.complete(task.getId());

The guide also covers querying process definitions, deleting deployments (with optional cascade), downloading deployed resources (BPMN and PNG files) via RepositoryService, and inspecting historical data using HistoryService.

HistoryService historyService = processEngine.getHistoryService();
List<HistoricActivityInstance> list = historyService.createHistoricActivityInstanceQuery()
    .processDefinitionId("myEvection:1:4")
    .orderByHistoricActivityInstanceStartTime().asc()
    .list();

Finally, the article summarizes the covered features and points readers to additional resources for advanced topics such as process suspension, activation, and variables.