Project Overview

Extending Liferay DXP with Custom Business Logic and ERP Integration

The client operated a Liferay DXP portal used daily by their operations and finance teams. While the portal covered basic content and collaboration needs, the business had outgrown its default capabilities. They needed a custom document approval workflow, an automated PDF generation system for contracts and reports, and a live data connection to their SAP ERP system — none of which could be achieved with standard Liferay marketplace plugins without major compromises on performance and security.

We designed and built a suite of six custom OSGi modules covering each requirement independently — a modular architecture that allows each component to be updated, replaced, or extended without affecting the others. The approval workflow was built as a Liferay Workflow extension with configurable approval chains. The ERP integration was secured with OAuth 2.0 and handled by a dedicated headless REST API module. All six modules were delivered with unit tests, technical documentation, and a deployment runbook.

The Challenge

The client's document approval process involved 4 different departments and up to 7 approval steps, managed entirely through email chains and shared folders. Contract generation was manual, error-prone, and took up to 3 business days per document. Their SAP ERP data was completely disconnected from the Liferay portal, forcing teams to switch between systems constantly and re-enter data manually — causing errors and wasted time daily.

Our Solution

We built six dedicated OSGi modules: a Service Builder-based approval workflow engine with configurable step routing and email notifications, a PDF generation portlet using Apache FreeMarker templates and iText, a document version control module, and a headless REST API gateway secured with OAuth 2.0 for live SAP ERP data retrieval. An Angular-based front-end widget in the portal surfaces ERP data directly to users without leaving Liferay. All modules use Liferay's standard DXP APIs to ensure upgrade compatibility.

The Result

Document approval time dropped from 3 business days to under 4 hours. ERP data is now available live inside the portal with sub-2-second latency. PDF contract generation is fully automated — zero manual steps. All six OSGi modules passed 100% unit test coverage on core business logic and have been running in production without incident since delivery.