Introduction to Plugins
Plugins are used in Flowable Design to offer a way to easily reuse models in Processes / Cases as tasks that can be dragged and dropped onto the modeling canvas. For the users of such tasks, all implementation details are hidden and the main concern is the passing of data in and out the task (in a technical way, you could say it behaves like an API).
Primary use cases for plugins are e.g.
- Making sure all company departments use a standardized set of tasks, even when there are different Design installations.
- Bundling custom behavior in an easy-to-install and easy-to-use way to other modeling users.
- As an implementation partner, having a way to port and install custom logic between customers.
- ...
Plugin task types
2026.1.0+The task exposed by a plugin can be backed by different kinds of models:
- A service task calls a service model (for example a REST call or a script).
- A process task starts a whole BPMN process.
- A case task starts a whole CMMN case.
Process and case tasks make it possible to take an entire process or case — with a clearly defined set of input and output parameters — and package it as a single, versioned, drag-and-drop task that others reuse without ever seeing its internals. This is a powerful way to build a library of standardized, self-contained building blocks. See Plugin development for the full authoring guide.
There are 2 concepts in Design around plugins: