Be a Tailor

Visual Paradigm plug-in provides an extendable platform for developers to add functions to Business Process Visual ARCHITECT. Developer can reference to the plug-in development guide to build their own plug-in to read, create, update and delete diagrams and model elements. Developer can use Java to develop plug-in. The following screenshots outline the steps to create plug-in for Business Process Visual ARCHITECT.

Plug-in support (Java)

Step 1 of 5: Develop the plugin

Setup the environment for developing plugin and start developing the plugin. You need to first include the openapi.jar to the build path, which can be found under the lib folder of Business Process Visual Architect/VP Suite installation directory. You may read the User's Guide to learn about how to develop plugin.

Step 2 of 5: Prepare the plugin configuration file

Create a file, name it as plugin.xml and place at the root of plugin. You need to fill in this file to provide information such as classpath, toolbar/menubar configuration, etc.

Step 3 of 5: Deploy the plugin

Create a folder "plugins" under the Business Process Visual Architect/VP Suite installation directory. Copy the developed plugin to that folder.

Step 4 of 5: Using the plugin

Start the tool. If the implementation and configuration are both correct, you should be able to run the plugin.

Step 5 of 5: Using the plugin (Cont.)

With plugin, you may iterate the project data to perform operations such as create, read, remove and update of project data.

Sample plugin

Tutorial

• BP-VA Plug-in Development

You may want to hide away some diagram types, menu items or toolbar items to avoid your team creating wrong types of model. Business Process Visual ARCHITECT supports customization of User Interface (UI) objects by XML. The following screenshots outline the steps to customize the tool.

Tool customization

Step 1 of 4: Open the Customize UI dialog box

Select Help > Customize UI... from the main menu.

Step 2 of 4: Select the UI components to hide

Select the menus, toolbars and popup menus to hide.

Step 3 of 4: Hide them

Click > to hide the selected components.

Step 4 of 4: Continue modeling

Restart the application and continue modeling. You will find that the chosen components are hidden.

Tutorial

• Customizing Business Process Visual ARCHITECT by XML