Workflow design | Displaying a message to the user

System

I am currently designing a workflow model, that will be created/developed using workflow modeler 7.3.2.

- user makes a selection of the files in the workarea and kicks off a workflow
- at the job instantiation form, user gets to choose one target environment (DEV, QA, STAGE, PROD) for the deployment.
- workflow would submit the files STAGING area.
- workflow would deploy files (static files using open deploy) to a specified target environment.
- workflow would come back and notify user that deployment is succesfull/failure.

Hard requirements is that, user (job owner) wants to see the status of the deployment after submitting the job instantiation form. Note - user does not want to check for an email notification, nor does she want to do anything else on Teamsite to check the status.

One option that I could think of is to create one CGI task (immediate task after the job instantiation), that does it all (submit and deploy), and displays a status message right at the screen.
If there is any programming, preference is to do it in JAVA.

Questions -

- Are there any other options, apart from CGI task?

- Can we use out of the box tasks (submit task, deploy task) and still be able to notify user after the job instantiation?

Adam Stoller

Look at the how the OOTB PLC WFM works - it provides a sense of status with regard to a bunch of back-to-back CGI tasks culminating in a deployment process - and if there's an error it transitions to a CGI Error task.

If you want to roll your own, you certainly can - whether you decide to put everything into a script program or break it up so that each process step hands off to the next one (generally better) is up to you.

CGI Tasks in the workflow is pretty much the only way to do it.
You might be able to build an external-to-workflow script that somehow monitors the jobs / deployments and reports back on them in a distinct window, but I don't think it's worth the effort.