Elsa Workflows Community, 27 May 2023

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From YouTube: Elsa workflows Community Meeting 36

Description

Elsa workflows Community Meeting 36

- Orchard Harvest 2023

- Orchard Core

Register here for the Orchard Harvest conference for FREE to watch my talk on Elsa Workflows: https://orchardcore.net/harvest

A

A

How are you doing.

B

I'm good audio.

A

Great, so let me start sharing my.

B

A

You have any topics you would like to go over. No.

B

Not really I missed a few meetings. I just want to catch up. What's going on with that Saturday, okay,.

A

Great so um I just have two topics which has to do with what I've been working on this week. The week before this week, I've been mostly working on the the dashboard application and I recorded that session, and it's it's on there. If you want to take a look so for this session, I was thinking maybe to discuss what I've been working on for the past week, which is in preparation for my upcoming talk on Orchard Harvest.

A

For those who don't know which Harvest is a conference organized by The Orchard community and for those who don't know what Orchard is. Let's take a look: it's an open source application framework. Let's see if they have description here, they have a list of features and uh Dimension media management to manage media types.

A

They have multilingual support, it's a modular framework multi-tenant, it has security and it has workflows- and this is uh this is the reason actually why I'm attending or doing a talk at the orchard Harvest conference, which, by the way is next week on Wednesday. My talk will be I, think it was 8, P.M UTC, and the reason for that, for the talk is, is that Elsa has its roots in Orchard core, so Orchard core has this workflows?

A

Module and I basically took that code and made it in uh to turn it into a reusable class library that has no dependencies and Orchards so that you could use it in other applications without also having to have a dependency on the rest of Orchard core, which is a pretty vast framework. It has a lot of stuff in it. You may not always want to use that. Have you ever heard of it? uh Muhammad.

B

Yes, I think because I started with elsa1 and I think that was a really inspired or they reported maybe from our chart. Yeah yeah I came to know about Elsa from N7 times and I. Remember that you, you mentioned the description as well, but it is, it is coming directly or you know. Inspired from here. That's.

A

Right yeah, indeed, Elsa one was a direct port in terms of the underlying workflow engine, the the runner that logic and even the designer in terms of UI. It was using the same Library which is DS, plump and uh yeah. It was. It was a direct copy. The main difference at that point, I think was the the UI was implemented as a as a spa using stencil I.

A

Think already at that point, and of course, the workflow designer in Orchard it's using uh gisplump and jQuery, and it's it uses data, it's not implemented as a spa, and actually that this is what what I wanted to do during this session as well, is just give a little bit of a demo of of Orchard core what it looks like what you can do with it and also take a look at the workflows module which I think might be interesting um before we go there.

A

Let me Link in case people want to attend the orchard Harvest conference, it's free, it's online, so you can register for free. It's it's. As I mentioned it's online. It happens on teams. um So if you want you can file include the link in the in the description. These are the speakers, including myself. Here this is the program, so we start with a keynote from Sebastian he's. The is a tour contributor and for the past more than 10 years, probably already he's the main developer of Orchard, starting with Orchard one and Orchard two.

A

Is we never call it Orchid two? We call it Orchard core, because it's a re-implementation from original Orchard of the pre-asp net, core time frame that was ported to using asp.net core, hence the name Orchard core, and then we have multi-tenancy a talk about multi-tenancy using words of framework QA automation by sorry, I'm blanking on his name. But it's it's such a I know him well, I used to know him very well. I met him in person. His name is Sultan he's a he's.

A

A great guy he's uh he's very, very smart and he's the founder of or the co-founder of long beak, and they they specialize in um Orchard consultancy and they they are big contributors to the Orchard Court project. So here's a talk about a real world implementation of forces. Core, it's going to be interesting, some breakout sessions in the afternoon and then localization and e-commerce module, and this uh my understanding is that the orchard core Commerce module is uh it was it's mentioned here.

A

It's a spiritual successor to noazette Commerce and was that is a brand name created by another or contributor of portrait. Back in the days he's now a program manager at Microsoft. His name is Bertram I, hope you'll be attending as well.

A

That would be uh fun to see him there as well, but we will see and then my talk, that's the last one about Elsa workflows and my plan is to talk a little bit about the history of elsao, where it came from and then describe a little bit what it would take, what it takes to take the orchard core workflows, module and make it you know reusable and Standalone and then and look a little bit at the uh the comparison, so the similarities between Orchard, core workflows and Elsa workflows, but also the differences yeah.

A

That's basically my talk so yeah. If you're interested you're welcome to join. It will be next week on Wednesday at 8, 05 PM UTC. So, let's, let's take a look at it at Orchard Court, so so they have documentation, they have forum. Here you can download this version. The latest version and the source code is on GitHub and I have also a weekly podcast that which is the weekly community meeting, which happens on Tuesday, which is also free for anyone to to join.

A

It also happens on teams yeah, let's just get it running, I already have it open in writer, and what I have here in writer just to walk you through it quickly? It's just a a regular ASP Network project. So there's nothing much to it. It's just an asp, a net core project created using the empty template. So it gives you just app settings and a program CS file, and this is what it looks like to to start using portrait core.

A

Of course you need to reference some of the packages, so they have an application, CMS targets, packets, which is like a bundle packets that brings in some of the other necessary dependencies I'm using a custom logging implementation using Siri log and a custom module. So Orchard core, it's a it's a modular framework and the idea is to extend its functionalities.

A

You create modules yourself, so in a module is typically just a class library or maybe a Razer class Library I, don't know actually I think this one is yeah, it's a Razer class library, but we'll look into this a little later yeah. So the only packets you need for Orchard is. Is this one which brings in CMS capability these as well and then to use it? Use, you just say, add: Orchard CMS: this is optional.

A

I, don't think you need setup features I, don't think you need Auto setup, which I think I have no I haven't tried it, but for my what I've understood from the forums is, if you wanted to automate Orchard setup uh using a some some build pipeline, maybe or some some just some scripting- uh you need this. One it's it's here: I copied it in from documentation, then you build a web application and you start the or Square middleware pipeline, so very simple to look at the uh you know for minimum setup of orchards.

A

So with that in place, I can oh I've already started the solution, so I should be able to just click on this link. The first thing we'll see, is a setup screen, so this comes from the I think the setup module in Orchard and what it will do. It will create a default tenant so which is multi-tenant, and by default it will create a default tenant which I think they call Shell.

A

So here, let's say or shared demo. They have this notion of recipes, which is very powerful because it allows you to basically take an entire configuration of an orchard installation and put it in a a file called a recipe which is a Json formatted file, and it allows you to well pre-configure a site. Let's say you're, creating a product portfolio website or an e-commerce website, doesn't matter or blog website, and you have it configured in a certain way. You can export it as a recipe, take adjustments as you as you need and then reuse it.

A

So if you, if you want to then replicate that website and and with different databases, because you want to create different blog posts or or create other content, you don't have to recreate the configuration yourself. You can just use this recipe, so here we could use maybe to block a recipe. Then we can specify the database provider, so their orm is yes SQL, which is like a nosql database but implemented using SQL or relational databases using a library called yes SQL, which is also created by Sebastian.

A

This guy he's a developer at Microsoft, and this is the benevolent dictator of Orchard core, all right so for username to admin all right that didn't work. Let me try again all right so setup is completed. We now have a basic block website, so we have a home page. That's this one and we have an about base all right. So let's go to the the back end. That's always admin all right. So here we are in the in the back end. So, let's explore a little bit depth dark mode.

A

First thing we see is a thing called blog, so this is like a this is a list of all of your blog posts within a Blog and the one of the most powerful features of orchards is the it's um capability to construct content types from building blocks called content parts? So almost every every bit of content in Orchard is is a Content item that that has a content type which is similar to let's say a class.

A

If you have a class that will be a content type and then a Content item would be an instance of that class. So here we have content types are called article blog Etc, but they are composed of content parts. So if we look at the content type definitions, we- and we take a look at- let's say what page, for example, we'll edit this one. So it has the title part and other route part the flow part and the page part, and the page part I think is an implicit part.

A

That is uh more it's it's used as a placeholder for adding uh Fields. So there's a third layer called content fields and these parts title Auto, Rod and flow- are the reusable parts. So you can create other types that reuse the same uh same parts, so they are like plugable bits of functionality. Here of the this Blog, the content type, you see the same parts, we see title outer routes here we see different particles, HTML body and a list behavior, so a Content part brings in a set of data, but also some Behavior.

A

So it basically turns your content type into something well, depending on the parts that you attach all right. So let's go back to the blog here. So here we have a Content item of type blog posts, and what we'll see here is the the title part renders this title inputs. So as you can see, it's very modular. The permalink field comes from the outer out. Parts markdown body comes from probably the probably there's a markdown part or something yeah. So there's a markdown body part which uh provides this input here.

A

Subtitle I think is a a Fields, probably on the blog post. So if we look at okay, so here we see the fields and I think technically these fields are attached to this blog post. So this is like an implicit part. That's based on the the content type itself and it's just a more of a container to to be able to add fields to it. So here we see the subtitle, Fields, Banner image, tags and category which we see here as well tags, category, Banner image and speaking of uh category. This is the unusing.

A

A taxonomy Fields, as you can see here and taxonomies, are like categories, but it's hierarchical. So you can go multiple levels deep and you can reuse that functionality for well more or less tagging your content in in advanced ways which can also allow you to to filter content items by a given taxonomy term. So it's a it's quite extensible and flexible, and it's rich in in functionality like that all right. So here we look at so here we looked at blog. So this is a Content item.

A

But if we want to see all content items, we can go to kind of names, and then we see all of those items and another feature of Orchard is the ability to customize this menu. So this is somehow configured somewhere. That shows just content items of type blog, all right so media library here. So this allows you to upload images and then use it in content. Items main menu is what is used on the front end.

A

So if we go to the front end here, no, oh here like this, this is the main menu which brings me to the next topic. There's a well in in Orchard. You have modules, but you also have themes and themes are similar to modules, but they are specialized in in the sense that they provide the Razer files or the liquid files or Sports liquid as well to provide the front-end UI.

A

So everything that you see here can be completely customized and in the way it works, is you create a project or you use an existing theme which is a nuget packets, and then you can customize it thanks to an advanced Concept in Orchard called shapes, a shape, basically being a a view model combined with a template name. So if you, if you render a shape, it has all of the metadata necessary to to display itself, which is so allows for very flexible composable UI rendering in order I mentioned modularity.

A

So let's take a look at the features. So in this this configuration section called features. We see all of the features exposed to the system and these features they come from modules and, as I mentioned, the module is just a class library and uh and that module has a manifest and it Manifest. This is a c-sharp file that has some some data or some some attributes. Let's take a look in a an example here, so here I have a custom module.

A

So it's a good way to to look at the Manifest here of this module, at least so it uses assembly attributes to provide some metadata about this module. So this one is called Elsa workflows. So if we filter on also workflows, this is the name of the the category and then the features and as I as you can see here in this manifest I expose three features.

A

One is like a just a workflows feature: let's just select the the default or implicit feature of the module and then there's a different feature called contents which provides additional functionality to the system. If this feature is enabled and what's so powerful about the way these features work. Let's, let's talk a little bit about dependency injection, for example, so here are features called content notice, the startup class. This startup is not an asp net core startup class, but it's it's.

A

It's like a um a plug-in startup class, so you have the main startup class in your application, of course, or I'll, not the startup here, but in this case just program. What Orchard will do it will invoke each startup uh class of its enabled feature.

A

So here you can see it's annotated with the feature attribute and the name of the feature, so this name matches the name in the Manifest, which is this one here, and so, if that feature is enabled through this UI here, so if I would enable this one, what happens is that this startup class will execute. So at that point the the shell will be restarted and then each startup class will be invoked, registering the the necessary services that are used here so here, for example, a content type options provider is being registered.

A

The this content, Handler Etc, so very, very modular, very extensible in this way yeah. So that was an example of a in this case a custom feature through a custom module. But, as you can see, there's there's many more features. There's a big list of features, there's deployments development stuff stuff for distributed hosting Elsa workflows, which is my custom module, which will dig into a little bit uh deeper in a minute open, ID, that's another, quite powerful module. That's provided out of the box.

A

It uses open edict which is an open source alternative to the popular identity server. For but it's free, not like identity surfboard, which is no longer 100 free, is my understanding.

A

So this allows you to very easily and quickly set up and open ID connect identity server if you want to as both as a server but also as a consumer. So it's uh it's just there just for free, which is pretty awesome. Let's see what else messaging email, Microsoft authentication is just one of the providers for this open, ID connect feature I mentioned auto route, that's a feature that allows you to attach or make content items routable. So we thought we looked at the one of the content items called well here.

A

We have a blog post with a permalink of this and that allows you to um to two routes to a container. So, as you can see here, this is the same URL, and this is the content item being displayed and it's tagged with these tags navigation over the connect. We mentioned this one performance feature, so you can make worksheet even faster just by enabling these features, search which uses leucine, which is what elasticsearch also uses.

A

So if you have, if you use elasticsearch under the internally, my understanding is that uses leucine, but you can also use leucine, for.net, directly, audit rail course, the social security stuff, of course users. It has roles and uses that you can manage so here. Of course, we have the administrator and rules and for each row you can specify its its permissions. So that's that's. What it looks like here so in any module can contribute to the set of permissions that you can then assign to a given role. So pretty big list huh usage.

A

This looks like this. So very, very simple. You have uh username email this by the way comes from at least last time. I checked comes from, say, content particles, user part, so the user part provides this UI I think this is the roles part at least that used to be the case. It might have changed, but in principle and and I I might be wrong.

A

Just as a as a disclaimer, it's been a while since I actually looked at it, but at some point at least in order to one users were also content items, and that means you can extend um with custom parts but again I, don't know if that's still the case, I believe I. Remember at some point.

A

There was some discussion: if it's, if it should remain a Content item or not, we would have to look into the code to to be sure, but I wouldn't be surprised if there is at least some way to extend a user with stuff like a profile theming, it's enabled. So this should mean we should be able to change the theme to something else so see. If, if I remember how general settings admin menus, okay, so on the recipes, we can run existing recipes. These are not set up recipes, but these are recipes.

A

You can execute after you set up a a tenant, and so here there's an easy way to enable elasticsears query whatever that means, and it seems like we currently only have one available or maybe I think I'm confused. So this is the block thing that I enabled which brings in these recipes, but this is not the way to change the theme figure out from where design. What about this? One themes all right. This is better. This is the current admin theme.

A

As far as I know, that's the only ethnic theme that exists today for the front end. This is the current site theme, so they have make a distinction between admin, themes and site themes, which is for the front end like this. So here they have a different theme called the 18 1860 theme and the coming soon theme, and we should be able to just switch to it.

A

So now, if we go to the front end and refresh nothing to see here, what do you see on the home page? So clearly, this theme wasn't designed for blog posts. As you can see, it's using some default rendering this doesn't look too good. Let's try the agency theme all right, so it has home and about, but as you can see the uh the parts, the fields they aren't. The theme isn't designed for uh for this.

A

These content items and the default theme here very basic um and aim little menu here to go back to the dashboard.

A

Let's quickly change it back to all right, so this one of course, is designed for it content types like uh block post, but in any case you can see it has a theming system, it's pretty cool, but it has. It has much much more, but um let's take a look at their not yet also workflows, but the built-in module the workforce module.

A

So that's this feature here, so we can choose from the workflows module itself and then some options to enable timer, workflows activities, session reflectivities, which is like I I, imagine, activities to to run database queries and to and this one it's about HTTP activities. Let's enable all of these all right. So with this enabled we now have a new menu item called workflows. We don't have any workflows yet, but let's, uh let's try one Let's do an HTTP, hello and, let's see so we have enabled.

A

So that's that's actually pretty good feature which we don't have in Elsa, although you could unpublish a workflow definition which is like disabling it. Maybe it's interesting to consider having an enabled disabled setting single instance. This is a concept we also have in elsa3 it's. It has more than just a single instance option. It also has an option to be a like a Singleton, but across correlation IDs, so you can have multiple instances of the same workflow as long as the correlation ID is different. That would be a different strategy here.

A

It's just a single instance, which translates to Singleton and Elsa delete successfully completed. Workflows is similar to retention module in Elsa, but there you can configure it from the UI, but here you can enable it straight from the workflow, which is pretty good, and then there are some advanced settings which has to do with I think distributed hosting. So if you host Orchard core in a multi-node environment and you run workflows, it will acquire a distributed.

A

Lock- and here you can specify the log timeout all right, so let's save this one, and now we are looking at the designer. So what do we see? Is we see properties which brings us back to this page, where we can change the name and change the setting? So what I'm trying to do is create a workflow that implements a Content approval workflow and the idea is for so.

A

Let's say when a contributor submits a new piece for the for the website, maybe through form, then the workflow should notify some some approver some user and that user shoot from the emails should be able to approve the content item or reject the content item and, depending on what link was clicked.

A

It should resume the workflow and then either publish the content item or maybe send an email to the contributor to make some revisions, for example, we're not going to implement the old thing, but just as a as a principle, I wanted to show the the signaling how it works in Orchard, because it's very similar the way it works in Elsa one and two yeah so but I didn't know the expression so I'm always looking at the documentation, so I think the idea here is is that approved would be the name of the signal, and this signal URL is a liquid filter.

A

That turns this. That generates a uh an absolute URL or maybe it's not absolute relative, and then you need to do absolute URL like this, and then it generates an absolute URL I think. Maybe it's not necessary. Let's see what the documentation says, yeah I think that's it. So you need to I think we need to use this one, but we have a proof and checks all right. So let's save this workflow and create a new blog post.

A

Of course, if you were to provide it or Grant access to a contributed to the backend which which is a legit legitimate uh use case in Orchard because of its permission system, but then you would probably want to disable access to the published feature of content items which I think you can do in Orchard, but for now we're going to pretend we don't have the publish button. We're just gonna think that we only can save this as a draft.

A

So let's do that we should have a new email and unfortunately, it doesn't show the body at all. Maybe I made a and an error. Maybe let's remove this one, because I think if it errors out, it will just not render anything, but this should be valid almost throughout well. This is maybe this is the issue like this.

A

Let's try. This again feel nothing. huh It's! uh Let's remove this traffic roof signal. What happens if we remove this one? Let's see I did notice that here, oh no, it was I I. It was including an escape character when I pasted it in, but I, don't see it in the documentation. So it's not supposed to be escaped well, let's give it one more try. No, it doesn't doesn't want to uh display the um the URL.

B

Text text in the email, without any other episode.

A

Like this yeah, so that's something doesn't want to show the the the email party. That's the body contain it smell I, don't know, could be a bug. This.

B

A

You think maybe this is uh doesn't. There is no content, nobody yeah! Well, maybe this is maybe it means it's just time to switch to a a proper WordPress.

B

A

So, let's take a look at Elsa workflows next, so, as I already mentioned, there's this uh I created I'm working on a custom, Orchard module called also workflows and I'm. The the goal is to have it integrate nicely into Orchard. So um when you look at Elsa two and three, it has its own reusable uh web workflows designer, which also includes menu items to browse word, for definitions, for example, but when integrating in a dashboard or an application. Like word shirt, it makes more sense to integrate those UI things into the system itself.

A

So here we have menu. Item called word for definitions to manage word for definitions, so let's create a new workflow. First, we are asked to create a name which is the same way. It works with the workflow built-in module. So when you create a new workflow, it asks you to provide an aim in some settings.

A

I kept it very simple for now, but this of course, can be extended with additional settings like we have in the lsf3 designer, including advanced settings if we want to, but for now we'll keep it simple, we'll say: http hello, world all right. So now this this designer is quite different from the Elsa one. Of course it has a different UI system for adding activities to the to the dashboard. So here you can drag and drop them onto the design service.

A

We have activity settings right here, so it's it's. It's it's very different as compared to the the orchard workflows designer and then here we have workflow properties. So, let's, let's do the HTTP hello worlds or or maybe what we should do is to the the approval. Maybe that's better so here we have content item created if you've used the new view sales, uh you don't you don't you haven't seen any content.

A

I have created activities, of course, because that's very domain specific in this case specific to Orchard and- and this is this- is what I want to show. Is the integration between Elsa and and Orchard through well Orchard course extensibility. So it has very similar Concepts that we have in outside and, as a matter of fact, many Concepts and else I have been adopted from Orchard core. For example, we have a folder called the content item created, which includes a Content Handler.

A

So a Content Handler is like a notification Handler or a mediator event: notification Handler, although or secure, doesn't use mediator Library. It has its own implementation of a similar concept and it allows you to handle a bunch of events. So, for example, whenever content gets created, you can hook into that event and do some stuff which is perfect for Elsa, because it allows you and and for the orchard, core workflows module for that matter. It uses the same mechanism because it allows you to listen.

A

For that event, when a Content item is created and then trigger a workflow trigger, so in L, in this case, I'm triggering a custom activity called content item created with. If we look at its implementation, this is a proper Elsa activity elsa3, so it implements trigger and it Returns the content item that was created.

A

So when it executes first, it will see if, if it was, if it executes as a trigger- and if so then it's going to continue an extra execute, which does nothing more than just getting the content item that it receives as an input setting it as its result and then completing itself. So that's very basic, but if it's used as a blocking activity, then it's gonna. What's gonna do here?

A

Oh then it's going to create a bookmark or each of the selected content types which I didn't show the, because the way this activity works it allows you to select which content items you want to filter on. So maybe you you don't want to listen for every content type, but just for blog posts in in this example, and then the outputs you can capture the content item that was created in a variable.

A

So here we have there's a little issue here with the UI because of well, first of all, because I'm not a front-end developer and second of all, it's this height of this toolbar. That needs to be taken into account.

A

But let's say we have a created content item and variable off-type content item, so this shows the extensibility of Elsa itself. Of course,.

B

A

Then we're not going to store it in the workflow, because a counted item could be. It is serializable by the way, but it could also be a little bit big and let's just keep it in memory all right and of course, let's not forget to mark this as a trigger and then capture the created content item here and now we could do the same thing.

A

We wanted to do in the other workflow in Orchards, where we send an email, but for that we need to enable that feature if we enter email, so I also workflows also has an email feature which we enable. Now, if you go back, then we see the send email activity and this by the way. This is the send email activity that comes from Elsa already, but because Orchard has its own SMTP service that you that can be configured from this configuration.

A

It makes sense for this activity to use Orchards um SMTP service and and that's just to show how how extensible and customizable else is as well. We look at the emails feature if we look at its startup class, so the way it works is it this startup class from Orchard configures Elsa, and then we tell LSAT to use well email functionality.

A

So it also also has a concept of features, but it's not quite the same implementation as Orchard, but conceptually it's it's more or less the same, and it allows you to overwrite the the factory that produces an I SMTP service, that's necessary by the send email activity of Elsa, and here we we're returning and wrapping SMTP service. So the wrapping SMTP service implements lsas ismtp service and internally it will resolve and um the the SMTP servers from Orchards.

A

So then, it's just gonna basically translate the my message to a mail message, which is what is used by your score and then and then trying to reuse as much as possible from both Elsa in the case of the activity and in the case of Orchard the SMTP service. So here we're basically doing some mapping and then invoking the orchard service, and this this name is of course, just an alias here, because both Elsa and Orchard used to say isntp server's name, but they are different types anyway.

A

So let's connect these two and then here's an email we can say well, we have similar Fields. So we have all of these things. Here we can say we can use JavaScript and or liquid. So that's that's cool. We could say. Let's say please review this new post. Then we could say, get created, content item. You see already it's getting better with the intellisense, then we say display text. So that's the subject and then maybe also in the body. It's published this one and now, let's create a new post.

A

Let's create pose number six all right. So here guys I think this comes from the older, the other, the other workflow. Let's disable the Auto workflow here content approval disable moment. Can you still hear me yeah yeah I can hear you, okay, okay, thanks!

A

Let's see did this work, so this is published, see because I didn't see the email coming in. Maybe I wonder maybe the SMTP services and well, it is clearly running so that's not. It can start workflow blog posts.

A

Let me just do one quick check with in the database at this point the else the orchard workflows works better because at least you get an email and where else you don't even get an email or it's a core else uh just to check if we have the trigger at least yeah, so at least we have this trigger, so something else seems to be a Miss. Let's see if at least descends email activity runs, okay, just try and create a new content item. Okay, so at least it's rigorous being invoked.

A

Okay and then here we do see. Oh I, remember this one! So this this fails because descent email activity isn't aware of the um the SMTP settings configured in Orchard, so from is not set, so it's just failing so quick workaround, of course, is providing a from value explicitly. So let's just do that.

A

Let's give it another go with post 9.. This one works all right. Let's see what happens here, okay, so it should have sent something, but did it I shouldn't have pressed the let's try again.

B

A

Something like that, something must be off let's um go into here and also we have a wrapped SMTP service. Let's see if we can find its options for 2525, that's okay default sender network is good.

A

It just doesn't seem to uh work anymore.

B

About the two two field, you updated the from field about the two good.

A

Question to it's empty yeah genius, let's also provided two fields. We.

B

Need validation.

A

Oh for sure, yeah, that's gonna save a lot of time. All right. Let's try it again with post 11. yeah by the way in um much Blazer there's built-in validation in the in the controls, which is going to be helpful.

B

A

There we go and, as you can see the this one works this. This is probably because we didn't set the body to JavaScript changes the job. Let's change that to JavaScript like this, creating another post, and then this all works and, of course, um I wanted to show the signal URL and also three. We don't have signal URL yet, but that's that has to be added.

A

What we do have is things like events, so we could listen for an event for you of a given name, but there's currently no way to conveniently generate some public URL. That then triggers the event which we do have in Elsa 2 in the form of signal received and a JavaScript function and the liquid filter to generate a signal URL, and that is something we also have in Orchard.

A

But that's that's currently lacking in elsa3 out of the box at least you can always implement it through its extensibility, but it would be good to have it out of the box as well, and then you can imagine waiting for approved and reject it and then, depending on that, you would have another activity. That's that's called something like publish content item, which you then to the workflow and provided the create a Content item as an input which would then get published so yeah. That's that's.

A

All I wanted to show for now on an orchard core for those who haven't seen it I think it's interesting to at least have a a have seen a glimpse of it, because it's as I mentioned it's it's where Elsa originated from yeah.

B

It's really interesting and I'm just wondering this ability for the feature toggling the assumption that you can enable the email and activities, for example, is this something that we can do in Elsa as well.

A

um Potentially yes, but but in in terms of doing it from the UI. um Let's, let's talk it. It is something I I want to be able to do as well from the UI, but it would require some um plus some additional work for sure, for example, the way it works in Orchard, it's it has this. This feature called shells and a shell. Is it's like its own?

A

uh Well, it contains its own dependency or its service container. So it's it's pretty Advanced and uh and- and we would probably need something like that in Elsa 3 as well or, if not else, a three in the dashboard application itself, but of course also on the server, because here in in Orchard, the UI serve from the same application as well as the word for server, but in in Elsa 3. Typically, you will have a separate server on this on on the back end, and then you have maybe a separate application.

A

That is the Blazer dashboard, for example, and it will be so cool to be able to have this this list of features that you can switch on and off and configure. But we we need to look think of the of a good architecture there, but.

B

That's that's going to happen if you could do it for this module, I mean I. Think logically, it should be also doable to Elsa itself, I'm, not sure, but it's very interesting concept, because I could imagine, for example, uh an administrator UI. Can you still hear me hello, yeah.

A

Yeah I'm listening.

B

Yeah yeah so, uh for example, an admin UI where you want to enable or disable certain features, or you know, even if you have a Marketplace later on, and you want to just download some activities and import them into the system. So this could be a really core capability to to also consider an answer itself. Yeah.

A

Absolutely yeah and uh I want to work on that pretty soon after the the else, the for the the dashboards project is is releasable, then I think one of the next features would be model tenancy in combination with features. Did you um did you see the uh Elsa Studio by any chance.

B

uh The mud Blazer based on right, yes, I, think I, saw in one of the previous meetings, but I have not seen the latest progress on that. Let.

A

Me, if you have a few minutes, I can show it uh yeah current state.

B

A

I'm just interested.

B

To know uh from Orchard or what was the motivation to have our flow module in the first place, because, as a Content management system, workflow is maybe another very core functionality to have. But.

A

It's a question: I didn't catch, it yeah.

B

I'm just saying for Orchard itself to to have our workflow module. What was the main motivation just wondering, because content management and workflow sometimes maybe not not strongly linked together.

A

Sure so, as it turns out, it's it's actually a quite powerful module to have uh arguably the most powerful feature to have in in Orchard or any CMS, because it allows you to implement many scenarios, for example, content approval workflows where, where you don't want to automatically accept content contributions, but you want to have people review it and then approve it.

A

That's one example: another example could be what Orchard allows you to create custom forms, so you can present those forms on the website and then, when somebody submits the form you want to process the data Maybe send an email turn it into a Content item and turn it into an order depending on on what functionality you're implementing what else? Let's take a look at the some of the events?

A

Well, the HTTP thing allows you to expose an endpoint that you can programmatically invoke and then maybe perform tasks like we have here assign a user to a role. This would be by the way useful if you are, if you expose a let's, say, a form on your website again, and you want to maybe Implement a registration form to allow users to sign up with your website.

A

You expose a form with a username and a password field and an email field Maybe when it's submitted, you create an actual user and assign it to a guest role, for example. So that's another example. What else could be useful updating content?

A

So those are just two examples that come to my mind, I'm sure, there's many other use cases that people have have used to uh in in Orchard itself and and I think workflows within a system like Orchard or other content, Management systems and and probably even more so in dashboard applications that revolve around certain domains. Of course, here we are talking about Orchard with basic content, Management systems, but also there is also used in uh by by organizations that extend the system with domain-specific entities, like maybe customer management or document management.

A

So so there will be more business, specific processes that you can Implement using these Workforce module.

B

And, for example, maybe I'm not sure, but if you make a post, you want to send an email to the subscribers or.

A

B

Publish the social media so.

A

Yeah today interesting, if.

B

That is if that is what you do in our. What is really interesting. Yeah.

A

Yeah, absolutely and- and you have used Elsa workflows in in your projects, so those uh scenarios probably could also translate into Orchard core. If you were using Orchid core to implement parts of your uh of your.

B

Yeah of your application, yeah I, think forms is very common and we have used forms uh concept with also workflows so.

A

B

That I can correlate with as well.

A

I'm trying to start the studio, but it's using a port, that's already in use the still huh this one stopped this one everything stopped our connection refused. Let's try to connect to. Of course. Let me start this one. First, apparently there's some fireworks going on I didn't know it was that that time of the year again,.

B

A

Right so here we have the dashboard. uh This is Elsa Studio, it's going to it's built in Blazer and it works both uh using Blazer server, as well as laser webassembly and the way it's I probably already explained this. The last time you you attended this thing right: okay, yeah, so I will not go over that, but I will show you the progress of course, dark mode. Light mode is still there.

A

uh A new feature to be implemented is environments, so this allows you to switch between the a registered environment that you want to work on, so it could be your local environment staging production. If you want to be brave and make fixes directly in the in production, if you want to and depending on the selection, the contents would be loaded from from from that environment. So this basically translates to an else API endpoint or Elsa hpn server URL right. So it would fetch the information from there. So.

B

We have definitions.

A

Instances doesn't work yet this is here. We have a few more menus just to scaffold some of the upcoming modules like web Hooks and secrets users and roles management, um so that you can, you know, manage uses of the system in roles and permissions secrets and web books. It's it's all just stopped out, so it's not really implemented.

A

This is a demo module and, of course, on the settings there could be a thing called features like in Orchard, so that you can indeed enable disable and configure uh settings or features here we have the designer wow. This looks ugly. Let me try again: okay, something is not right here, I fixed this, but let me quickly switch to light mode, which is a little bit easier on the eye in terms of the grid. So what's really cool about this is this that this designer this area? This is X6, so it uses JS interrupt.

A

Of course, as is the you know, also for this drag and drop, but these these activities they are actually rendered using Blazer. So we have.

B

A

Yeah seriously, so so actually also this toolbar. This thing here, the breadcrumbs these things here. This is all Blazer, it's not implemented, yet it's just mostly UI scaffolds. Also for the speaker, this is also Blazer using mud, Blazer components. The way this works is with blaze components. You can register them as custom elements so that you can use them in in in you know in JavaScript. So when I configure this this designer this design service using X6 I have a custom.

A

What is it called custom shape, I think is what they call it, and then you then, and then I'm, using their HTML shape and in the HTML I'm, creating markup that uses a custom element called I, think Elsa activity or something, and then it just renders it. It just works.

B

Oh, that's. That's really interesting. Yeah.

A

And you can- and you can already see where this might be going now- it becomes so much easier to to customize the UI of your activities. You could do it also in stencil, but then you would have to create a sensor component, but now you can use Razer Razer components to to customize the activities provide custom activities with custom UI both on the designer, of course. Also in the inputs. It would be easier to add custom input controls you implement cascading UI. If you need to Etc yeah, that's so that's the current current status does.

B

It support if I have a material UI theme I want to change the parallels.

A

Oh so so mud laser implements material, UI and, and this dashboard is not set up to allow you to do something completely different. It actually tightly integrated mod Blazer. Of course, mud Blazer itself has theming in terms of colors, so you can change the colors and certain other aspects, but you are stuck with material design. It's not like Orchard, where you have complete freedom in terms of theming.

B

For us, it is fine to be stuck with material. That is, we are trying to implement material for our interface, so I just want, because right now, the way we embed it is just we put the designer inside the UI. It is not really matching so uh so, if, if this is implementing material, we are also trying to implement material I'm, just wondering if we can merge together and have the same theme somehow.

A

Yeah I see yeah yeah, it would be, would be really good to to have maybe complete customer say customizability in terms of theming, but it's also a lot more work right. The the main point of using mud Blazer is to be able to use an existing component library to quickly build out.

B

A

Of course, to allow you developers to reuse those components and and even add more components, taking those components from from that library and and leverage in their custom modules. Also, it has tab GUI, so you can quickly switch between uh well, not too quickly. If you do too.

B

Quickly, you get this error yeah reasonably quickly, yeah yeah, exactly but.

A

Still it's quicker than having to go to the perfect definition browser and then clicking, and obviously this error will be fixed at some point. So.

B

That's really exciting. It's really.

A

Impressive, that's cool and so yeah so, but unfortunately, I haven't been able to continue with this for the past week. So it's there's no progress, yeah, yet 31st! So next, Wednesday I have the orchard talk after that. I expect to be able to continue with this uh this dashboard all right. Well, thank you for joining Mohammed I. Wish you a good night yeah you too good night. Thank you and I'll catch you next week, bye-bye foreign.