A mortal’s guide to initiation
Posted by José D. De la Cruz on April 18, 2008
Intalio is a wonderful, robust solution that is incredibly lightweight… but it also has a personnality, even a strong character sometimes.
One of the common difficulties is to convince people that something like Intalio exists, that it works, and that is Open Source. Then, they’re ready to try, but there is no guide to follow. I’m a strong believer of constructivism but I’m also aware of the lack of time (or of patience) of experienced people. Therefore, I’d like first to avoid the frustration of others with Intalio.
My goal is to decode bit by bit, in just several hundred blog entries how to find your way and become an Illuminati of Intalio. 
First of all, download the Intalio plaftorm. This normally requires registering onto their website. Just do it, and keep your password somewhere. I propose you to send yourself an e-mail with your password, using the same e-mail address that you used for registration. Then, you’ll find all Intalio-related information in the same place. Intalio people won’t annoy you and fill your Inbox; they will instead warn you 2-3 times per year if something important happens (new releases, a new feature like a screencast repository in their website).
You should download the Intalio Designer and the Intalio BPMS server. I’ll explain this better soon in another entry. Install them locally. They’re Java applications (mainly), so it should be straightforward to set them up and make them run on your machine.
In order to learn how to use it, please try to go through the Screencasts and Tutorials (basic) in the Intalio website. On the other side, you can suffer with me and follow the series of entries I will write; they are tagged as “Initiation” and/or “Start”. Just click on the Tag Cloud for finding out those articles. There will also be series on Project planning, Roles in the design of Business Processes, BP-Patterns, etc.
If you can, attend one of the courses taught by Intalio experts; the documentation given to you and the sharing of their expertise deserve the effort and the money. Besides, I guess Intalio follows the Enterprise 2.0 model, with the advantage of reactivity and tight links with their customers. The Intalio guys are really cool.
Later, try the Samples and the non-basic Tutorials. The forums are there to ask for questions. On this blog, I’ll try to focus on my daily experience with Intalio and give some hints on several issues related to the “Dark Side”
