Connect Workflow

The Sally.connect workflow depicted in figure 1 is executed every time a new client connects to Sally. See section 2.1 for more details.

The workflow starts by creating a subprocess which will be stopped as soon as the “Disconnect” message is received. The subprocess first waits for a WhoAmI message (which will be saved in AlexInfo data variable), then task “Init Theo” is executed. Next, it enters an infinite loop accepts messages of type “AlexData” and “onForward”.

Whenever an AlexData is received – means the current Alex opened a new file and hence, “Create Document” task is executed. Depending on the information from AlexInfo (i.e. WhoAmI message), the task “Create Document” starts either a Spreadsheet workflow (see figure 2) or CAD workflow. The newly started workflow has a “processID” identifying it and a map PDM (class ProcessDocMappings) stores the mapping, document name to processID.

Whenever the connect workflow receives a message that is not AlexData, it resends the message as onForward message. The Forward task, looks at the filename (fn) field from that message, and forwards it to the workflow identified by PDM(fn). In this way, when an AlexClick is received from the client, it forwards it to the workflow created by “Create Document” matching the file name from AlexClick.