Platform extensibility

Bonita comes with more than 80 standard connectors to the major information system components: major databases (Oracle, Microsoft, Postgres, etc.), SOAP Webservice, Salesforce, Email, etc. A new connector enables you to provide new connectivity capabilities for processes. To implement a new connector, you need to provide some XML description files and a Java class respecting the Connector interface. Connectors can be implemented directly from Bonita Studio.

Bonita comes with a set of standard actor filters that can be used to reduce the list of candidates for process tasks. A new actor filter enables you to provide new filtering capabilities to processes. To implement a new actor filter, you need to provide some XML description files and a Java class respecting the UserFilter interface. Actor filters can be implemented directly from Bonita Studio.

The Bonita Engine APIs enable you to:

ProcessBuilder and Business Objects DAO are examples of APIs that can be leveraged in your development. They will remain stable in time.

The REST APIs enable you to integrate your Bonita processes into your application and execute operations on Bonita objects including business objects. Pages and forms created with the UI Designer rely on the REST APIs to manage data.

In addition to the standard APIs and resources, you can define REST API extensions. In the Bonita subscription edition, Bonita Studio contains tooling for creating, testing, and deploying REST API extensions.

A custom page is a page that you can add into Bonita Portal to form part of an application, customize information provided in default portal pages, or to add new features to the portal. To implement a page, you need to provide HTML, CSS and Javascript resources respecting some packaging constraints. You can create a page using the UI Designer, which automatically creates a well-formed page. Note that although the page framework provided in the product is stable, we cannot guarantee that all custom pages will work with future versions, because this depends on the details of how the page is implemented.

If the standard UI Designer widgets do not meet your needs, you can create a custom widget. You can then use your custom widget in pages, forms, and fragments - for Subscription editions.

Included in the Engine APIs are methods to import and export various items. These methods manipulate files with formats that are versioned. Newer versions of the file format are designed to be backward compatible with earlier versions. The following items have import and export API methods:

From Bonita 6.3, the Engine authentication service is considered to be an official extension point of the solution. It is now safe to provide your own implementation of this service to better fit the needs of your projects. Default authentication implementations are provided allow to check user credentials from the Bonita database, LDAP or a CAS SSO server (using JAAS). To implement an Authentication Service, provide a Java class respecting the Authentication Service interface.

An event handler is an extension to the engine that is configured to run when a specified event occurs. An event is a change to any object in the database. To implement an event handler, you need to provide a Java class respecting the Handler interface.

Bonita includes a script, BonitaStudioBuilder (also known as the Workspace API), for building a bar file from a process in a project. This intended to be used for automating builds in a continuous integration and testing environment. You can use the BonitaStudioBuilder to build a bar file for processes stored in a project.

The Bonita Portal Look & Feel gives the ability to customize the appearance of the portal Web interface. As a Portal Administrator, you can import a new Look & Feel (.zip archive). To create a new Look & Feel, provide CSS and resources files.

Bonita Portal comes with a number of language packs by default. You can also add languages. It is also possible to use this same mechanism to customize the portal terminology to your business environment. For example, an e-commerce business could change Cases to Orders.