This third milestone of Nova Bonita comes out with an innovative architecture based on a generic and extensible engine, called "The Process Virtual Machine" and a powerful injection technology allowing services pluggability.
Nova Bonita M3 also include basic support for elements defined in the XPDL 1.0 standard. Next versions will continue to improve the standard coverage and services support: asynchronous execution, versioning, iterations… The major improvements from M2 are:

• Powerful workflow API covering deployment, definition, runtime and history workflow data
• Standard (J2SE) vs Enterprise (J2EE) deployment
• Subprocesses support
• Configurable journal and history workflow modules
• Advanced process deployment capabilities including ".bar" file deployment and local vs global resources (hooks, mappers)
• Unified life cycle for workflow activities (XPDL activities types) execution handling synchronization with Tasks, also known as manual activities, life cycle.
• Task Management module handling init, ready, executing, finished, dead, suspend and resume states
• Default mapper implementation: Initiator Role (aka properties roleMapper in Bonita v3)
• Process Virtual Machine 1.0.beta1 integration

For complete imformation check out the release notes

Future milestones will continue to improve the standard coverage and services support.

In a few weeks, the next Milestone (M4) will come with a new BPM graphical console for Nova Bonita and Nova Orchestra. This console will be based on the ultimate version of the eXo Platform open source project. Together with this console we will continue to leverage the integration we did in the past between Bonita and eXo ECM inside a portal.

Note that as eXo is based on portlets, so the BPM Console will easily allow to add your favourite portlets and new features on top.

The BPM console will provide deployment, execution and monitoring BPM capabilities. It could be deployed individually or in common with Nova Bonita and/or Nova Orchestra projects. Could you imagine a Web 2.0 generic and customizable console for easily handle XPDL and/or BPEL processes? Stay tuned M4 releases is coming soon !