Service Tasks with PHP SDK on camunda

Question

I'm starting to develop my process with camunda and I have a simple question to ask on how to remotely manage different kinds of tasks. First of all, let me explain my scenario:

I have two main groups: The accountants and the clients. The client only see their own dashboard, built in my system and the accountants have all the information about the client in their system, which have a simple task list. Now, I don't want another interface for the users.

Once my scenario is explained, let's get back into my question:

Using camunda, I can gather the actual task if this is a user task, create variables, set the values into them, assign the task into a specific user, resolve them and everything sounds good.

When I need to use a service task, I have to do the opposite way: The camunda application need to send a request into my application with some REST or SOAP command to execute.

I understand this approach when I'm using a zero-code BPMS and need to automatically execute something in an application, but once this application is mine and is integrated to the BPMS, I can't see why I can't manage the services tasks instead the BPMS.

I want to know if this two-way is really necessary, once I'm already in my application, sending user requests into camunda. I want to know if isn't better to control the service tasks via PHP SDK too.

I'm willing to develop something, but I want to hear from you if this is feasible or not, and why before.

Answer 1

actually there is no way to control service tasks via the PHP SDK too. Our service tasks are written in java and could only be controlled from within the engine. IF you want to use the same way as with user tasks you need to use a combination of the intermediate message catch event and the deliverMessage service like:

$camundaAPI = new \org\camunda\php\sdk\Api('http://localhost:8080/engine-rest');
$request = new \org\camunda\php\sdk\entity\request\MessageRequest();
$camundaAPI->message->deliverMessage($yourRequest);

The service parameters can be found in the api documentation of the PHP SDK Project (see org\camunda\php\sdk\entity\request\MessageRequest) or in the camunda BPM REST API Documentation (here)