We've been getting a lot of great feature requests from customers ever since we initially announced the Flux Web-based Designer. These requests have driven development and really improved the Web-based Designer. One of the most common requests that we have received is to support embedding the Web-based Designer, which was added in Flux 7.5. We're building on this feature in the upcoming 7.6 release due out 12 November 2007. Flux 7.6 will support monitoring flow charts in the embeddable Web-based Designer. This will allow you to easily support rich workflow operations for your Java web applications. Embedding the real-time monitor will allow your users to easily export, view, monitor, and change running flow charts without leaving the comfort of your web application.

Support for custom actions and triggers in the Web-based Designer is also coming in Flux 7.6. We're enhancing our support for custom actions to support tweaking the display of custom action properties in the Web-based Designer so you can make your custom actions easier to use. Dependencies for custom actions will be moved to the engine side in Flux 7.6, meaning that you only need to install custom actions on the engine instead of the engine and Operations Console.

The following screen shot illustrates the real-time monitor embedded inside of a Java web application:


The flow chart loaded in the screen shot above illustrates a basic time off request business process. Users of previous versions of Flux will quickly notice the major differences. A control bar has been added to the real-time monitor to allow the user to easily control the flow chart while monitoring. Icons are displayed next to active actions to illustrate their execution status. In this screen shot, the business process is waiting for the supervisor to review the employee's time off request. Once approved, an email goes out and then an event is added to a shared Google Calendar.

Layout of actions are persisted to the Flux repository in Flux 7.6 too. This way, when you position your actions in your flow chart and save to and re-open from the repository, your actions will be displayed just where you left them.

If that isn't enough, we've also added support for our built-in file actions and triggers along with supporting runtime data mapping. This will allow you to create a flow chart that transfers files, involves human interaction, and calls out to custom Java code, all within minutes without leaving your web browser.

I hope these new features will be useful inside your application. Post a comment to this blog entry or contact me directly if you have any questions about the new features coming in Flux 7.6, or if you want a pre-release to experiment with.