Workflow editing software required - recommendation [closed]

Question

Any recommendations for software to allow users to edit a workflow representing a business process? Ideally .NET, but any technology (winform / asp.net / wpf / etc) would do.

I would need to be able to initialize / investigate the layout through code to map it to my system - either via an object model or a file in a known format.

I've considered:

• Microsoft Automatic Graph Layout - a bit scrappy, to be honest
• ILOG Diagram for .NET - very impressive looking, but a bit pricey for my needs
• Workflow Foundation (editor hosting) - too WF specific (rather than BPM)

To clarify - this is the sort of thing I'm trying to do (this is the ILOG tool in action) - although it doesn't have to be quite as feature-rich...

(edit - I think I'm going to plough forward with Netron)

Universal

I was wondering about this too. – Fibroblast

Update - the tool cited is now 404; see comments for a possible alternative. --- I'm now thinking that Netron is my best option - a flexible and extensible interactive diagramming tool, with (among many other examples) things like below (again, this is the tip of the iceberg): (image no longer available) – Universal

Your link is now dead. I think this one is a possible replacement? – Burden

Answer 1

There are a couple of XPDL tools with graphical editors such as Bonita ProEd:

_{(source: theserverside.com)}

or Enhydra Shark:

Don't know how user friendly they might be.

There is also YAWL, which has some pretty friendly looking tools.

Artemisa

I haven't picked a solution yet, but this answer got me looking in the right places. – Universal

Answer 2

Skelta is an interesting piece of software. Though we ended up not purchasing because of their odd licensing and pricing model.

I'm very interested to see what you finally settle on to implement this, as we are facing this same challenge, and so far we have settled on rehosting the WF designer.

Quelpart

Answer 3

Mark,

I've seen WinGraphViz used in a corporate .NET application that used custom workflow- .NET assembly dependency analyser uses it. The application probably won't be suitable for your needs as I assume you want to let the users drag/drop items as opposed to merely viewing the workflow? Whilst this is possible, I'm not sure how smooth it would be!

Anyhow it might open up new doors/new avenues to explore in your quest to find a suitable library.

Monet

Answer 4

You discuss only the graphing and visualization tools but what about the actual workflow implementation? I think you are starting at the wrong end - first choose your workflow engine and then think about process editing and visualization.

Somebody

Actually, the context here was having grown tired of our existing workflow vendor product, and finding the alternatives lacking for our purposes - looking into doing it in-house. – Universal