Home > fox BPM Platform > Overview > Platform Architecture > camunda fox cycle
camunda BPMN framework

camunda BPMN framework

create technical models out of process models created by business analysts

create technical models out of process models created by business analysts

fox cycle: a generic glue layer

fox cycle: a generic glue layer

Your collaborative tool for BPM projects

Camunda fox cycle is a new kind of tool and the central building block for the Business-IT-Alignment with camunda fox. Its main purpose is the roundtrip between the tool environments used by business analysts and developers. It therefore implements the methodology described in our BPMN-Framework, that has been proven as very helpful in numerous BPM projects, but has never been properly supported by a BPM stack – until now.

Roundtrip between Business and IT

Using cycle you synchronize the BPMN diagrams in fox modeler with the BPMN 2.0 – XML – Files edited by developers in the fox designer. The typical use cases are:

  • Create a developer friendly BPMN 2.0 XML from a fox modeler BPMN 2.0 – diagram (Forward Engineering)
  • Overwrite an existing developer friendly BPMN 2.0 XML with a fox modeler BPMN 2.0 – diagram (Forward Engineering: Update)
  • Create a fox modeler – BPMN 2.0 diagram based on a developer friendly BPMN 2.0 XML (Reverse Engineering)
  • Overwrite an existing fox modeler – BPMN 2.0 diagram with a developer friendly BPMN 2.0 XML (Reverse Engineering: Update)

Just to make it clear: Of course the diagrams in fox modeler as well as the “developer friendly” XML are based on BPMN 2.0. But we differentiate nevertheless between those two models, because in the BPMN diagrams used by business analysts we often have a complete collaborational diagram (multiple pools), which is not relevant for the developer (who often implements just a single pool). That is why we speak of a “developer friendly” version of the process model.

In fact, camunda fox cycle is neatly emeddable in your existing infrastructure: If you are using Subversion for software development, you can let cycle commit the generated XML Files directly into your Subversion, and also use the files stored in Subversion for later synchronizations. If you are using GIT, then fox cycle will connect with GIT. Basically cycle is a “generic glue layer” that can connect to a broad range of repositories (see below). Additional features support your development organization, like a direct generation of Java-BPM-projects based on configurable templates (e.g. for Maven) or the automatic creation of new projects on your continuous integration server (Jenkins).

A glue layer for different repositories

With camunda fox cycle you can organize the different artifacts in your BPM projects in a well-arranged and completely customizable folder structure. You can link files, trouble tickets, process diagrams etc., and they all remain in their physical repositories, so you wont have to create any redundant copies, but still keep them in one browsable tree.

With cycle you can link files into your tree, that are physically stored in

  • Microsoft Sharepoint or Alfresco ECM
  • Subversion or GIT
  • FTP- or File-Servers

You can link issue filters from your JIRA and even link all those artifacts to selected elements in your process models (like tasks or events) for realizing a truly process oriented requirements eingeering.

For all this, cycle uses a generic technical infrastructure that you can easily extend with your own plugins and therefore connect with your individual repositories.