Bonita open source BPM community blog

Use BPMN links to add readability to process diagrams

mickey.farrance — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 13:35:01 +0000

Processes modeled in Bonita Studio are not only executable – the graphic representation or process diagram is also useful when stakeholders in the process need to participate in process design.

Business Process Modeling (BPMN) uses links to allow the process designer to graphically cut up a long and/or complex process sequence and link up parts that are not next to each other on the whiteboard.

This video shows an example process diagram using links.

A throw link looks for a corresponding catch link and the process flow behaves is as if there is no break. Links are treated as intermediate because the process continues…

Labeling links is one way to keep track visually of what links to where. The throw link below is labeled A-B, and the corresponding catch link is labeled B-A.

Use labeling in whatever way works for you.

Note that links can only be used in the same process, or pool. This pool, titled Trip Request, has multiple lanes, but it is a single process. Links can be used across lanes in the same pool.

For a throw link, you can choose the destination catch link in its Details panel – you need to add the destination catch link to your process diagram first.

To add a throw or catch link, select an event element from the palette and drag it into place.

Then select the link type and configure it in its Details panel.

Links make it possible to simplify the visual presentation of a process flow, especially when it is too big to fit neatly on to a single page.

A clean, readable process diagram in Bonita Open Solution is easy to share and discuss with stakeholders who are involved in the process, but who are not directly involved with modeling and design.

Don’t let your process diagrams go wild – use links in Bonita Open Solution!

Exploring BOS: How to use buttons in a form to direct a process between different paths

mickey.farrance — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 16:35:10 +0000

When a process has multiple paths, the process designer has to specify when and how various alternate paths are taken. One way to do this in Bonita Open Solution is through the use of multiple Submit buttons.

This tutorial video shows one way to do this.

In user forms designed in Bonita Open Solution, the Submit button completes the step (task) and the case in progress then passes to the next step in the process. (In multi-page forms, the last form in the series has the Submit button.)

You can define two Submit buttons so that the selection of one button sends the process to one path and the selection of the other sends the process to a different path.

For example, you can use Submit buttons to direct the process flow to one path for the condition “True” and a different path for the condition “False.” (In this example process, we’ll define “true” as “one horn” and “false” as “two horns.”)

For the step where you want to define alternate paths, go to Step -> Forms and Add a Form. Add two Submit buttons to the Form.

Rename the buttons so they appropriately reflect the path to the next step.

Go to Details -> Actions. In the Expression field, enter the condition or expression to be associated with this button. Save to the predefined variable that you will use on the conditions defined for the transition that connects this step to the next step in its path. In this example, ${numberOfHorns} is defined as “false;” ie, the path of two horns.

Go back to the process on the Bonita Studio whiteboard and select the transition between this step and the subsequent step, and apply the defined condition.

When the form is presented to the user, the selection of the Two horns button will send the process to the next step, “List the species with two horns.”

Do the same for the One horn button.

You can download this process from Contributions – count the horns and name that rhino!

The Process Challenge – Win an iPad!

Jlipp — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 19:48:00 +0000

Dear community,

As Bonita Open Solution users, you have certainly already developed many processes with Bonita Open Solution. How good are you at developing processes? Just ok? Pretty good? Very good? A master? A superstar?

To foster the exchange of processes among YOU, the Bonita community, and to let you individually show-off your best-in-class processes, we are launching The Process Challenge!

It’s simple: you share your best processes with the Bonita community in the Contributions section on www.bonitasoft.org, and the community in turn will rate them. After the community has its say, we’ll gather our best BPM experts to evaluate the final top ten and decide on the winners!

The Prizes:

First Place: an iPad
Second Place: a Motorola Cliq (Androïd phone)
Third Place: a selection of best-selling books on BPM (worth 100€)
Honorable Mention (four to ten): a BonitaSoft USB key

How it works:

Step 1: the Community vote – July 26, 2010 to September 30, 2010

Upload your competing processes in the Contribution section with the category Process Challenge ; and
Vote for all the processes submitted during the period.

On September 30, we will stop the voting and designate the 10 processes selected for Step 2, that is, the 10 processes with the best calculated rating (see formula below). Note that there is limit of 3 processes per participant – if there are more than 3 in the top 10, we’ll take only the top 3 for that individual.

Step 2: the Jury

The 10 processes that pass to the second step will be tested and evaluated by the jury of 4 BPM experts who will establish the final ranking of the contest.

The jury will determine the final ranking from the following criteria:

Legibility / clarity of the process
Complexity, particularly the use of BPMN feature
Customization of web interfaces
Breadth of process applicability – how far and wide it could be applied
Quality of explanation: annotations, description, illustrative videos, etc.

The winners will be announced on October 8, 2010.

Key rules

To participate,

You must be a community member (and your profile must contain valid information for name, address, phone)
You must own the Intellectual Property of the processes you submit
You can submit as many processes as you wish, but a maximum of 3 processes per participant will be eligible for Step 2.

The calculated rating is determined as follows:

Calculated rating = (community rating) x (number of downloads) / (number of days elapsed since creation date) x (number of votes) / (number of days elapsed since creation date)

Read the full rules (in English)

Read the full rules (in French)

…and have fun!

View current ranking

Questions? Use our forum

Exploring Bonita Open Solution: Begin customizing forms with Bonita Studio Form Builder

mickey.farrance — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 16:56:48 +0000

Bonita Open Solution includes a Form Builder that allows the process developer to easily (and graphically) design the contents of forms for end users. In this tutorial, we’ll look at the basic functionality of the Form Builder by creating some form content.

Form content can be created for each step in a process by selecting the variables for the form fields and then customizing the fields using an assortment of widgets available in Form Builder. Form content designed this way can be customized to be inserted into your Web applications, or they can also be presented in the default Bonita Web application.

This tutorial shows a two-step process, with a form in each step. The first form is intended for the case initiator to enter data. The second form is intended to take the user’s data and simply show it to the next user.

Use the widgets in Form Builder to create, layout, and format fields for different types of data. They are presented in the Palette, circled on the left side of the Form Builder:

In this video tutorial we’ll look at how to handle just a few: date, textbox (a “live” field), text (a display-only field), radio buttons for a choice from a list of options, and an attachment. Forms (or the last form in a series) always require a Submit button, although that button can be renamed/changed.

We’ll also use the tools in Form Builder to move and resize the cells containing the fields.

The Details panel in Form Builder allows the form designer to specify characteristics of fields, for example, to:

Make a field mandatory
Present a default entry for a field
Take the data entered, use it in an expression, and save the result to another variable
Accept only a certain type of data (eg email address or date)
Change the size of rows and columns in the form
Change cell, label,and field appearance

We’ll specify some characteristics for a few of these in the video tutorial: labels, tooltips and data handling.

Do you have a pet rhinoceros? Register your rhino with Bonita Open Solution…

Bonita Open Solution: release your processes into the wild!

Exploring Bonita Open Solution: Change default Web app template and customize confirmation messages

mickey.farrance — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 08:51:49 +0000

Bonita Open Solution has many features that are — while not exactly hidden — perhaps not immediately evident. So we’ll feature some tutorials to highlight a few of these. This one will show where to find the different default Web application templates provided in BOS and how to apply them. We’ll also look at how to change a confirmation message presented to an end user.

In a process modeled in Bonita Open Solution, at each manual step that takes an input, BOS automatically creates a Bonita Form with fields based on the defined data variables. These forms are presented in the default Bonita Web application for each step.

Bonita Open Solution version 5.2 includes several process-level Web application templates to choose from. This tutorial addresses how to change the process template for the default Bonita Open Solution Web application. (Just for fun we’ll also look at how to change a confirmation message.)

You can see both of these in this video.

Change the default process template

The built-in, default template in which all Bonita Open Solution Forms are presented is an html file called at the process level. Five built-in process templates are provided. Each contains the div bonita_form, which is filled at runtime.

The default process Web application template:

To see the available templates provided in Bonita Open Solution, go to Pool -> Details -> Applications.

The default Process template is “black.” Its resources (CSS and images) are shown in the Figure below:

To see the other template options provided, click on Built-in template.

You can select a different process template from here – select the “white” template

and Preview it.

This is now the default process template that all your Bonita Open Solution forms and messages will be presented in.

Confirmation Messages

The confirmation message is shown whenever a process moves from one end user to the next as a case proceeds. That is, at the end of a sequence of steps performed by one user, a confirmation message is shown before the subsequent (manual) step shows up in the inbox of the next user. (For example, this is what happens when a process case is launched by a user who completes a series of forms.)

Change the confirmation message

Here is the default confirmation message, shown in the “white” Web application template:

To customize it, go to Process -> Pool -> Forms.

To use variables in a custom confirmation message, use Edit Expression.

Use the Groovy editor to create an expression.

The confirmation message shows in the appropriate field.

It is then presented in the process (with variables as entered by the process Initiator) when this step has completed.

Moving a RCP application from Galileo to Helios: feedback and tips

Aurelien Pupier — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 16:13:43 +0000

In this post I’m going to share our experience migrating our RCP product Bonita Open Solution from an Eclipse 3.5.1 to 3.6.0 based platform. There were some issues but we were successful. I will also offer some tips so you can avoid some mistakes and save migration time.

Dynamic Services

This one was the trickiest to identify and fix because the only way to find it is in a stacktrace with NPE in the log. In fact, FrameWorkAdminService is launched via Declarative Services in 3.6 and so you need to add org.eclipse.equinox.ds in your plugin-based product definition. And be careful, this plugin is not identified as required. This is the “drawback of using Dynamic Services” (to quote Lars Vogel). This same issue is also problematic with e4. You can find the related bug here.

GMF

The issues

In order to identify potential issues we tested the migration with RC1 and RC2. There were some API modifications that were out of phase between GMF and qvtOML with the RC1 and RC2 releases. It took some time to find them and we needed the qvtOML milestones update site to make it work.
On one of our high custom editors, we could no longer reparent (move a figure inside another). Canonical Edit Policies has been improved in order to fix this annoying bug. For that reason, a new method has appeared in GMF templates to override the refreshSemantic method. So, first, I removed the overridden method — but the copy/paste didn’t work after that. The trick is to keep the overridden method and add to the end of this method, not at the beginning, a call to the super method. You can take a look at this bug and see our aspect template for more information.

The advantage

Using providers and Aspect templates limits the amount of customized code to check. In fact most of the modifications were done to remove some fixes as they are now in the new release (canonical diagram empty after restart, save as saving only diagram and others). So moving to Helios simplifies Bonita Open Solution code.

Tests

There is very good news here: Eclipse is now using JUnit 4 by default! Now you can write your plugin tests with JUnit4, and this avoids a lot of struggle trying to get both standard plugins tests and JUnit4/SWTBot tests working together. Both kinds of test can now run without any hack, using the provided JUnit, and the org.eclipse.ant.optional.junit fragment loaded in your product.

Target platform

Kudos to greclipse which provides a zipped update site to test on Helios. However upgrading the target platform for greclipse 2.0.2 for Eclipse 3.6 was a little complicated due to a patched org.eclipse.jdt.core (can’t uninstall on the target platform/conflict with patched jdt.core).
It seems that BIRT doesn’t provide an update site to test 2.6 on RC releases. So we kept the 2.5.1 version of BIRT. The good news is that the 2.5.1 version works great with Eclipse 3.6.
A little tip: use p2 to construct your target platform and keep all feature names with their repositories. They will be helpful for your next migration.

In a nutshell, there are difficulties migrating to Eclipse 3.6 but it is definitely do-able!

I wish you a good migration, hoping that my feedback will help you, and look forward to your tips and feedback from your successful migration.

Send a notification email to candidates of a task

rlg — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 09:45:19 +0000

A frequently asked question in the community is how to send a notification email to candidates when a new task is created. This article describes how to quickly do that by using the user management included in Bonita User Experience.

Prerequisite

You have to provide an email for users in the Bonita User Experience. You need a smtp account in order to send emails.

What you will do?

You will configure a task to send an email to all its candidates. The email will contain a link to perform the task.

How to do that?

You have to add a new send email connector on the enter event of the task. Then you have to configure your smtp access and fill the email configuration page with the values below:

From	direct value	YourSender@Email.com
To	Groovy	import org.ow2.bonita.util.AccessorUtil def candidates = AccessorUtil.getQueryRuntimeAPI().getTaskCandidates(activityInstance.getUUID()) def to=”" for(user in candidates){ if(to!=”") to+=”,” // If Emails are not stored in Bonita User Experience, please adapt the next line to get email from your system to+=AccessorUtil.getIdentityAPI().getUser(user).getEmail() } return to
Subject	Groovy	activityInstance.getDynamicLabel()==null?activityInstance.getActivityLabel():activityInstance.getDynamicLabel()
Message	Groovy	import providedscripts.BonitaURLs; out=”A new task was assigned to you:\n” out+=(activityInstance.getDynamicDescription()==null?activityInstance.getActivityDescription():activityInstance.getDynamicDescription())+”\n” out+=”\n\nPlease click on next link to perform your task:\n” // Please adapt the next line to your environment: the host and the port of your application out+=BonitaURLs.getStepURL(“localhost”,”9090″,processDefinition,activityInstance) out+=”\n\n– \nYour quality team\nhttp://www.bonitasoft.com”

And that’s all. Now when the task is created, an email will be sent to all candidates.

You can download the Send notification email example if you want to quickly test this example.

Map your Active Directory or LDAP groups in Bonita Open Solution 5

rlg — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 14:28:12 +0000

Issue:
You have your users and groups defined in an Active Directory or a LDAP server and you want to use them in Bonita Open Solution in order to assign tasks.

Solution:
To do that, you have to use the LDAP group resolver or the Active Directory group resolver to do a one-to-one group mapping in Bonita Open Solution.

This article explains how to do that step by step.

Prerequisite

You need to know how your directory is structured. Generally, when you create users and groups in a directory, you are invited to create one container for users and another one for groups. So the first thing you need to know is the paths to these 2 containers.
For this article I suggest the next structure (adapt this guide with your own structure):

DC=ad,DC=bonitasoft,DC=com
|
+– OU=BOSGroups,DC=ad,DC=bonitasoft,DC=com
|   |
|   +– CN=bos5test1,OU=BOSGroups,DC=ad,DC=bonitasoft,DC=com
|   +– CN=bos5test2,OU=BOSGroups,DC=ad,DC=bonitasoft,DC=com
|
+– OU=BOSUsers,DC=ad,DC=bonitasoft,DC=com
|
+– CN=rodrigue,OU=BOSUsers,DC=ad,DC=bonitasoft,DC=com
+– CN=miguel,OU=BOSUsers,DC=ad,DC=bonitasoft,DC=com

rodrigue, miguel are in bos5test1 and rodrigue is in bos5test2.

What are we going to do?

The goal here is to create 2 groups in Bonita Open Solution according to this mapping:

BOS Group	LDAP/AD Group
Group Test 1	CN=bos5test1
Group Test 2	CN=bos5test1

How to do that?

You have to use a group resolver which is a specific connector to create a group. In Bonita Open Solution, a group is a way to represent a list of candidates. You have to translate the group in a list of users with a group resolver. In our case, you will use either the LDAP group resolver (if you reach a LDAP server) or the ADGroupResolver group resolver (if you reach an AD server - note that you need to install this connector from the community contributions). These 2 connectors work in the same way. So you need to configure:

the server access
the query to find your list of usersT
To write your query you need to provide:
- the path to where your groups are stored. In the given example: OU=BOSGroups,DC=ad,DC=bonitasoft,DC=com
- the path to where your users are stored. In the given example: OU=BOSUsers,DC=ad,DC=bonitasoft,DC=com
- the filter to find the group: example: CN=bos5test1
  Warning, the filter is applied on the groups not on the users.

Configuration and test of a group mapped with Active Directory: step by step

Open menu Connectors > Test a Connector
Select Group and click on Next
Select the ADGroupResolver connector and click on Next
Select configure from blank and click on Next
Fill the form to connect to the Active Directory server (note the port is 389) and click on Next
Fill the request with the group base path, the user base path and the filter (here CN=bos5test1)
Click on Evaluate and check that your configuration is ok
Save your configuration: click on save connector configuration, enter the name of your configuration and click on Finish
Click on Close
Create a new process, select Step1 and select Actors tab
Click on Create
Select the ADGroupResolver connector and click on Next
Enter the name of the group in Bonita Open Solution: Group Test 1, and click on Next
Select Configure connector starting from an existing configuration and select the saved configuration: Configuration for Group Test 1 and click on Next
Click on Finish
Select your process and select the Dependencies tab
Add the ldap connector in the dependencies

We’ve successfuly configured and tested the group. You are now able to run your application and see that your task is assigned to admin (the Initiator group), rodrigue and miguel.

What have you learned?

You’ve learned how to map a Bonita Group with an AD or LDAP group

What haven’t you learned?

You haven’t learned to do an authentication against LDAP or AD server. This is not done with Bonita Open Solution but it will depend on your deployment server (Tomcat, JBoss, JOnAS, Glassfish, …). You can configure the authentication with LDAP or AD server by configuring the JAAS layer of your server. Please refer to your Application Server Documentation to know how to do that.

Your comments are welcome in order to improve this article.

Yes you can! Bonita Open Solution 5.2 is now available to download!

mvaldes — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 13:42:53 +0000

Dear community,

We are happy to announce today the new version of Bonita Open Solution, your favorite Open Source BPM software! 5.2 version comes with an impressive set of new features:

BPMN2 and JPDL import modules
Native connectivity to Jboss Drools, Microsoft SharePoint, Microsoft Exchange and SAP,
Additional BPMN2 features: intermediate events, conditional flow, links, loops, default sequence flow, send and receive tasks, send and receive scripts and services…
“A la carte” export wizard to deploy Bonita Engine as well as your BPM applications on your favorite server (Jetty, Tomcat, Jboss, Weblogic…) and using your favorite infrastructure (custom server and public or private Cloud)
Improved User Experience: comments in tasks and cases, task priorities updates, BPM applications templates, data grid widget, javascript support in web forms…
and more

Are you looking for the complete list of features and improvements included in Bonita Open Solution 5.2? If yes, this post is for you…

Please find hereafter the complete list of features included in this version:

- 0001312: [studio-modeling] Add dynamic label and description field for a step - 0001547: [studio-connectors] Changing a connector order in a step, delete the conenctor and copy another one - 0001545: [studio-forms] Do not see validators on form widgets - 0001546: [studio-forms] Form name does not change - 0001518: [console-worklist] Admin case list is unable to display processes with no human tasks - 0001517: [console-appli] Sometimes the auto resize of frames doesnit work and a scrollbar is displayed - 0001538: [studio-modeling] Replace radio button by a checkbox when defining loop - 0001528: [studio-connectors] SAP connector wizard crashes when configuration is incomplete - 0001529: [studio-connectors] When resizing SAP connector wizard, contents is not resized

- 0001525: [studio-import-export] JPDL: bad name if it is not a valid java identifier - 0001479: [console-appli] Multinstanciate activities are not executed in the same order than in the userXp - 0001509: [console-appli] Support javascript on body load event in html templates - 0001448: [console-worklist] Add an about section with the version of the software - 0001436: [runtime-tests] Improve benchmark tool - 0001486: [studio-forms] Add a button to download the generated page template - 0001482: [studio-import-export] Problem with groovy default method outside jetty - 0001474: [console-appli] Checkbox groups and multiple lists generate an error in view mode - 0001462: [studio-connectors] Improve Table Widget - 0001476: [console-appli] The default CSS style for table cells should not override the custom styles - 0001478: [studio-tools] Improve groovy editor opening time - 0001481: [studio-connectors] Improve UI layout to avoid some widget to be trunk - 0001434: [console-appli] Support the injection of all LightActivityInstance fields in the page template - 0001454: [console-worklist] When the user is redirected from an URL to the login page, the URL is cleaned and parameters are lost - 0001428: [studio-integration] Design integration - 0001456: [studio-modeling] Support all version for subprocess - 0001458: [studio-modeling] remove the upper case constraint on data label - 0001299: [studio-forms] Need to be able to specify label location around the fields - 0001431: [studio-forms] Grid Widget - 0001438: [console-appli] Widget grid support in the forms - 0001430: [studio-forms] Dynamic message in confirmation template - 0001433: [console-appli] Attachment are saved under the name of the data field id instead of the attachment name - 0001425: [studio-import-export] Improve export of UserXP and Forms - 0001440: [studio-repository] Save in studio menu doesn't call the right savecommandhandler

- 0001418: [studio-connectors] Problems editing properties in connectors

- 0001510: [studio-forms] Disable data field type convert between multiple list and single list data field - 0001370: [runtime-core] Remove UndeployProcessHandler - 0001368: [runtime-core] BPMN start a process from an event of another process - 0001367: [runtime-core] BPMN add loop concept - 0001366: [runtime-apis] Add a method to change an activity priority - 0001365: [runtime-core] Improve migration tool - 0001363: [runtime-tests] Test: Clif migration - 0001362: [runtime-connectors] Add a generic database connector - 0001360: [runtime-connectors] Add MultipleActivities implementations - 0001371: [runtime-connectors] Add a list widget - 0001381: [runtime-connectors] Improve connector error trace - 0001382: [console-worklist] Step's priority in languages other than english - 0001411: [runtime-connectors] When a connector is is error, ConnectorAPI should return it with default page - 0001410: [console-appli] When displaying multiple steps sumultaneously in the case editor some steps show the login form - 0001409: [studio-connectors] Create a dedicated wizard for SAP connector - 0001407: [studio-modeling] Selection graphical offset when creating a lane in large pool - 0001395: [runtime-core] Remove pending event thrown by an undeploy process - 0001394: [studio-connectors] Widget list - 0001392: [studio-validation] Improve validation markers refresh - 0001383: [integration] Deliver a 64-bits Windows launcher - 0001359: [runtime-connectors] Add multiple activities selection in ConnectorAPI - 0001358: [runtime-connectors] Test new mulitple activities - 0001357: [console-identity] Renew the credential token - 0001301: [studio-import-export] Display includedentries that are no more valid and add possibility ro remove them - 0001294: [runtime-core] When an error occurs in an automatic activity the activity remains in state EXECUTING - 0001290: [runtime-apis] Get process instances by instance state - 0001287: [studio-connectors] Allow to all widgets the Groovy scripting use - 0001222: [runtime-core] Transfer attchments to sub-processes - 0001085: [console-appli] EJB 3.0 compliance - 0001040: [console-worklist] Let the user choose the language of the user XP (and application) and persist his choice - 0001303: [studio-import-export] Enhance import of bpmn 2 file by importing diagram (from Bruce Silver bpmndi.org diagram) - 0001309: [studio-forms] Add tooltip to buttons, label, message widgets - 0001343: [studio-model] BPMN - loop - 0001356: [console-appli] Add a preference to disable the credential transmission mechanism - 0001355: [console-worklist] Add a preference to disable the credential transmission mechanism. - 0001354: [console-worklist] Change a step's priority - 0001350: [studio-modeling] multi instantiation - 0001347: [studio-import-export] import jPDL 3.2.6 1st part - 0001346: [studio-repository] Script management in repository - 0001345: [studio-forms] Add tooltip info with an icon to show input type of form field - 0001344: [studio-modeling] BPMN - start event message

Enjoy this new version… and remember, have fun!

Miguel

A call for feedback from the community

nicolas.chabanoles — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 17:17:59 +0000

After receiving feedback concerning one of the most well known User Experience (User XP) features, labels management, we are now facing a difficult choice.
We believe that the best solution is the one that best fits the need of the community, so we are requesting your input.

This is about how users like to organize their list of tasks in Bonita User XP.

We are currently using a label approach:

Bonita User XP offers 6 predefined labels: Inbox, Starred, Unread, My Cases, Archive and All.
The definition of these labels is shared by all User XP users, for instance “My Cases” always means “cases started by me”.
Some of these are automatically attached to cases by the system, i.e., Inbox, Unread and My Cases.

User XP also allows all users to define their own custom labels.
A custom label is a means for each user to organize their tasks accordingly to their own logic.
The list of custom labels is user specific and is private.

That is to say, that if user “John”

creates a label “todoBeforeHolidays”
assigns this label to the case “review Jack’s report”

then neither the label nor the association between the label and the case will be visible by anyone other than “John”.

The feedback we have received is that some people would prefer to see all labels assigned automatically to cases by the server instead of having users doing it manually.
We are considering the possibility to replace the current feature with a new one, not only because of this feedback but also because this powerful feature has a cost: heavy queries are executed against the database and impact the reaction time of the User XP.

An alternative to the label approach is the tag approach:

Only authorized users can create new tags.
Tags are automatically attached to cases by the server according to predefined criteria, e.g., instances of “Vacation_Request” are assigned tags “HR” and “Vacation”.
The case-tag association is visible by ALL the users involved in the case.
Consequently all the users will have the same predefined tags to sort and search with. (The logic is centralized)

This approach seems less flexible from a simple user point point of view, as they cannot organize their tasks with their own system (cannot create new tags or change the tag-case associations).
The advantages of this approach seem to be:

standardize the organization of tasks among all the users
guarantee that users will not “lose” a task by attaching a wrong label
reduce the impact on the User XP reaction time (less data stored in the database and lighter queries)

	Advantages	Disadvantages
Label approach	user logic	performance affected
	Others?	Others?

Tag approach	central logic	user cannot customize
	performance maintained	user acceptance (in case of migration)
	Others?	Others?

Which approach do you prefer?
What other advantages and disadvantages do you see?