Offline workflow, processes and tasks

evgeni_frox

Hello,

At the moment, we're developing an application that has the requirement of working offline, while the client has no connection to the Internet and syncing back to the Server/DB when there is a connection.

However, using the available offline dialogs, seems not to be enough and there is basically no further information or a sample project, on how to create a complete offline workflow/process.

Thus, I have few questions on that topic, that I'm trying to find answers for:

Do we need to take care of caching the portal, tasklist etc..., on our own and then, for example, using the Task API to sync the offline task when the connection is back?
If we need to take care about everything ourselves, how can we do that and what do we need to cache - using JS SW?
Do you have a sample project or a workflow that we can follow to achieve those goals?
On few places you're mentioning that in the mobile app it is completely implemented, but, I guess that is no longer supported and updated. Is that the case or there is a new way of achieve that now?

Any suggestions, guidelines and ideas, are very much appreciated!

Best regards,
Evgeni FROX

Reguël Wermelinger

Hi Evgeni

The idea is that the mobile app handles all the work around being offline, such as:

syncing available tasks via REST endpoints of the engine
allow users to work on offlineTask-forms
if the users isn't online while finishing forms ... the app will post data back to the engine once the user is connected again.
then there are convenience features: users can attach documents to out of the app. Which will be added to task/case docs.

We had the mobile-app up and running. But currently we are just building it up anew from scratch.
To overcome limitations, such as running only on IOS in favour of running also on Android which many users prefer.
Maybe @Andreas Balsiger or @Marcel Prügel can share more insights into the ongoing development here.

So I'd strongly consider to wait for the new app instead of building the featureset on your own. Nevertheless I try to answer the questions:

Yes you have to sync tasks back and forth; available tasks with our rest-apis (which have been greatly improved for the mobile app on 11.3)
Caching mainly is about available tasks/cases (keeping our rest response json). Furthermore the OfflineForms, of a users Pending tasks can be requested and stored, for later filling by the user. And also finishing form-POST requests on OfflineForms, should be cached.
HtmlDialog-Demos include a few sample Offline Dialogs: showing how validation can be achieved without having a hot Engine connection. https://market.axonivy.com/html-dialog-demo
The current LTS has no compliant official market.ready app. We're just developing one for 11.3 and aim to be stable and ready for the next LTS12. (at least as far as I know)

Best regards,
Reguël

Listing the REST resources tagged with 'workflow', which are mainly aiming to server the mobile app:

.

evgeni_frox

Hello @Reguël Wermelinger, @Christian Strebel,

Thank you for the info and looking forward to the next version!

In the meantime, how can I complete user task with an offline dialog with a REST Call?
Do you have any ideas or examples?

Thank you in advance!
Regards,
Evgeni

Reguël Wermelinger

You can get the payload, URIs and Verbs to use by running a simple process with a UserTask and and OfflineDialog.

a GET request on a pending tasks sends you the form to fill
from the received form you can extract the action URI
a POST request to the form URI, will end the Dialog with the given data.

evgeni_frox

Hello @Reguël Wermelinger,

I'm trying to do the same things, but, I cannot get the task to complete.
When I do a POST to the action URI with some form data, the user task dialogs starts again, and I just get back the page/form payload as with a normal GET request.

Reguël Wermelinger

Here's some sample-test code, which does a post-finish request using java.net.http APIs.

method=POST
uri=(see form action)
headers=[Content-Type=application/x-www-form-urlencoded, Authorization=Basic....]
payload=url-encoded-form (must contain a valid view-state!)

public HttpResponse<String> post() {
      var requestBuilder = HttpRequest.newBuilder(uri)
               .header("Content-Type", "application/x-www-form-urlencoded")
               .POST(ofFormData());
      return execute(requestBuilder);
    }

    private HttpRequest.BodyPublisher ofFormData() {
      var builder = new StringBuilder();
      for (var entry : params.entrySet()) {
        if (builder.length() > 0) {
          builder.append("&");
        }
        builder.append(URLEncoder.encode(entry.getKey(), StandardCharsets.UTF_8));
        builder.append("=");
        builder.append(URLEncoder.encode(entry.getValue(), StandardCharsets.UTF_8));
      }
      return HttpRequest.BodyPublishers.ofString(builder.toString());
    }

    private HttpResponse<String> execute(HttpRequest.Builder request) {
      headers.entrySet().forEach(entry -> request.header(entry.getKey(), entry.getValue()));
      if (username != null) {
        request.header("Authorization", basicAuth(username, password));
      }
      return send(request, followRedirects ? Redirect.ALWAYS : Redirect.NEVER);
    }
  }

  private String basicAuth(String username, String password) {
    return "Basic " + Base64.getEncoder().encodeToString((username + ":" + password).getBytes());
  }

private HttpResponse<String> send(HttpRequest.Builder requestBuilder, Redirect redirect) {
    try {
      return HttpClient.newBuilder()
              .followRedirects(redirect)
              .cookieHandler(cookieManager)
              .build()
              .send(requestBuilder.build(), BodyHandlers.ofString());
    } catch (IOException | InterruptedException ex) {
      throw new RuntimeException(ex);
    }
  }

evgeni_frox

Reguël Wermelinger

Thank you for your support!

I managed to do it. I was sending the id of the hidden ui input element for the ViewState and not the name.

Best Regards,
Evgeni