Anyone using Maestro for workflow applications?

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Andy_D's picture

I am looking at replacing some internal applications with Drupal and require workflow elements unrelated to publishing content. This seems to be what Maestro brings to the table but it is unclear whether to use a custom form, a content type or a Webform. Does anyone have any experience of this module they'd care to share?

Many thanks in advance - looking forward to introducing myself at the next meetup!

Comments

therobyouknow's picture

I am involved in a small team in the early stages of prototyping a specific intranet web-based application using Drupal for automating, and providing electronic data capture for, certain business processes, using Maestro, WebForms, Entity Forms, web page workspaces and other supporting modules. I might therefore be able to share some experiences overtime if appropriate and this would be from my first hand experience and not the represent the view of the organisation overall that I work in.

The open source and community nature of Drupal provides opportunities to build custom web applications through extensions by adding Drupal modules (such as those mentioned above), though we also want to use Drupal as the "glue" for interfacing and integration with other internal and external systems, both proprietary and non-proprietary. With Drupal Views and Drupal's role-based access to all this information that's glued together, this would enable people to see what they need to see to be able to do their tasks effectively.

We've worked in a number of large organisations and experience tells us that there is no one overall system/application that is a panacea for all business process; rather, if such systems have open interfaces then they can inter-operate - where Drupal comes in here is to provide the glue.

Challenges so far: The above all said, the devil is in the detail and we are in the early stages of prototyping, so much of the above is still to be done. This is a steep learning curve and we are discovering that the Drupal development pool is very public access web page oriented, which is why your post is encouraging as we'd like to be involved in a (sub)community of Drupal that shares ideas on applying Drupal as intranet-based business process application as it has great potential here as well as being the basis of some successful high-profile public websites.

Thanks!

Andy_D's picture

Many thanks for your reply, its quite reassuring to know I'm not the only one on 'North Face' of this learning curve (sorry, but misery loves company!) Your offer to share is very much appreciated and I will sign NDA quite happily just to see some working code!!!

My own background is Lotus Notes work which is the main driver for this development - to ultimately replace the current suite of apps with web-based ones. I see Drupal as providing an excellent UI experience and taking the hassle out of coding up a rich interface for users and managers alike. The modular aspects make it ideal (imho) allowing you to use as much or as little as required.

Any thoughts/experience on Active Directory integration with the Drupal User core?

therobyouknow's picture

LDAP and Active Directory-based login tools are well established for Drupal. There are contrib modules and articles on the subjects.

I started looking into this myself, some time ago, here are some links from my research:
http://drupal.org/project/ldap_provisioning
http://drupal.org/project/ldap_integration
http://www.rhinocerus.net/drupal-modules/switching-from-drupal-authentic...
http://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/apache-httpd-active-directory-authenticati...
http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9780596521110.do
http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9780596520601.do

Myself, I hadn't got as far as implementing this however someone I know has achieved it from non-Drupal code (Perl and Python) and given the above support, it is definitely possible in PHP/Drupal.

You may also be interested in auto-login by IP address: http://drupal.org/project/ip_login

Over to you, have you looked into applying Drupal for automating, "electronicising" any of your business processes?

LDAP module for 7

chrisdolby's picture

http://drupal.org/project/ldap is the module you'll need if you want a Drupal-based solution.

It wasn't ready a year ago, but I've been following it for a while and believe it's becoming more stable, the 2.x branch is the one you want. Not recently tried to use it though.

You could sign people in using a web server module or an external script, like Rob suggested.