DataConnectors
By itself, Hakken isn't terribly useful as it only stores task submissions on a local database and it has no way of creating a task instance without external input.
To make it useful, you need to define one or more DataConnectors. These are essentially "drivers" for interacting with external systems. Currently there is only an open source connector for working with an external database, however West Midlands Fire Service have developed a conenctor for their (soon to be opensourced) enterprise workflow platform called ActivityAssistant. Eventually more open source connectors will be added to this repository.
A DataConnector is responsible for:
- Getting a list of the equivalent of TaskDefinitions from the external service. These are DataConnectorTaskDefinitions (awkward naming ahoy!)
- Saving submission data to the external service
- Getting a list of task instances (jobs) for the current user.
The DataConnectorTaskDefinitions are used for setting up mappings in the Hakken server admin interface between the external services workflow definitions and those used in Hakken.
To create a new DataConnector, you need to implement the . See the
for an example.