Initial Discovery

Using the Maestro Toolbar, select Template Builder to open up the the Template Builder which is the main interface for workflow. You can also access it from the Site Admin Structure menu - /maestro/templates/list.

When maestro is first installed, it creates an initial template that can be used to verify that maestro is installed correctly. Before getting into the details of using the Template Builder, let's just explore this first workflow template and test it out.

It's a basic workflow that will demonstrate launching two tasks initially in parallel and then joining back to serial branch. The OR task is used so that which ever of the initially launched interactive tasks completes first, the workflow will proceed to the task labeled Interactive 3. If an AND task had been used instead of the OR task, then the workflow would have waited for both interactive tasks to complete.

Now, make sure you have enabled a method for the workflow engine to execute or else tasks will not get launched, completed or moved forward as per the workflow template. We call it the Orchestrator or Workflow Engine because it's what powers the workflow and orchestrates the process. In a production environment as per the Installation notes, it would be scheduled to run in the background by your server cron process, but for initial development and testing, we can execute the engine manually or better yet, have it run every time we access the task console. 

Access the Maestro Engine Settings - admin/config/workflow/maestro and enable the setting to run the Orchestrator on Task Console Refreshes. Note: you need to enter something for the token in order for this form to save. When your setting up for production, enter a more secure token for this since the URL to execute the engine will need to be public accessible URL for cron to execute it.

The Orchestrator's URL can be called directly in a browser for testing. The Orchestrator page runs identically to that of Drupal cron: It returns a 204 status code on successful completion. A 204 response is not a Drupal whitescreen-of-death.

If you initially looked at the http://yoursite/orchestrator/[[wrong-or-missing-token]] URL, a "Wrong Orchestrator Token" message will be shown in your browser. If you proceed to fix the URL manually to have the right token in the same browser page showing the "Wrong Orchestrator Token" message, it will appear that you will get the error message no matter what you do!  The issue is that your browser is still showing the original page since the orchestrator returns a 204 status code (no content returned status).  To properly verify the orchestrator is running, run the orchestrator in a new browser window/tab to verify functionality.

Starting the workflow process:

From the Template List, click on the Operations drop button to show the additional actions and select Start Process to launch a new instance of the workflow. Now bring up your task console - /taskconsole, the easiest way to access this is from the Maestro Toolbar.

You should now see the two parallel interactive tasks which by default they are assigned to you. Clicking on Execute will bring up the modal dialog for the interactive task. It's a simple modal dialog with both an Accept and Reject button. These interactive tasks can be configured to use any custom function that presents a form.

Completing one of the parallel tasks will move the workflow forward to the OR task which detects that one of the branches has completed and the engine will then orchestrate the Interactive 3 task and assign it to the initiator - so you should then see 2 un-completed tasks again in your task console.