Workflow Management - An Overview

Organizations across the globe have many application systems running at their site, to fulfill their business needs. In order to ease their work and to establish effective communication across the people of the organization and the people who are all involved in the business process, it is necessary to have a powerful application in place to configure at site to manage the flow of documents. If no configuration is set at site, a default setup will be referred to manage the flow. To enforce this at user level, “Workflow Management” component is used.

 The capability of workflow management includes the following: 

• Enable Workflow Security

• Set Authorization Option

• Define Document Routing

• Define Authorization Process

• Enable Notification Messages

• Define Process Rule

• Define Workflow Profile

• Define Message

• Set Priority for Rule

• Maintain Email ID Information

Enable Workflow Security

To work with the workflow management component, permissions must be given for a user, area and organization unit combination by the workflow administrator. If permission is set, then the user can configure workflow management with the available inputs.

Set Authorization Option

The following options can be set for any workflow-driven process, specific with a workflow area and organization unit where the process would be initiated.

•  Authorization steps through Configurator

• Authorization not Required

• Single Step Auth. without Configurator

• Notification only Required

If the user needs to perform his operations without workflow, “Single Step Authorization without Configurator” option can be set for every workflow area and organization unit.

Users can be identified directly or based on the rule as set in workflow configuration. This is enabled only if the option “Authorization Steps through Configurator” is set for the selected workflow area and organization unit.

If no authorization process is required for the selected workflow area, then “Authorization not Required” option needs to be set in workflow configuration.

If the task performed requires a broadcast message only to be sent to a set of users, then “Notification only Required” option needs to be set in workflow configuration.

Define Document Routing

Documents that need to be routed across areas (or) documents where there are more than one forward task, need to be identified either directly or rule-based. Users and relevant messages need to be attached to the succeeding task, if the document routing is across area.

Define Authorization Process

Workflow configuration should be done to the succeeding task (Authorization Task) only. Workflow steps are defined as intermediate states in the flow of a document authorization process. Users can add any number of intermediate states as multiple steps through ‘Introduce Workflow Steps’ page for a specific component, activity and task combination. For example, if a leave application is entered, the document moves to ‘PENDING’ state. This implies that the document is ‘Pending for Authorization’. Based on the user’s requirement, multiple steps of authorization can be set up. These steps are defined as workflow states like ‘Level1’,’Level2’ etc. On performing authorization at every step the document moves to the respective state.

These steps are used to define multiple paths for authorization. Each path can have multiple steps. User can either opt to define direct paths or paths based on process rules. Users need to be attached to every state and organization unit, either directly or rule-based to perform the relevant task. Also, identified messages need to be attached to every state. These messages will be received by the user who will perform the task. Additional users can also be attached to receive such messages.

Enable Notification Messages

Identified messages can be attached to the selected task and state, if the authorization option is ‘Notification only Required’. Users need to be attached either directly or rule-based, to receive such messages. These users cannot perform the transactions associated to the task. This is used only to broadcast the message.

Define Process Rule

Process rules can be used to decide branching of a transaction process or to decide the steps in a transaction process. These rules are defined using the pre-defined parameters listed for the selected task. Also, a user can build the stored procedure to evaluate the rule.

Define Workflow Profile

Users can be grouped and identified under a profile name for a selected task. These profiles can be attached instead of individual users. Either all users or any one user from the profile can be enabled while attaching a profile to perform the selected task.

Define Message

Messages, which will be sent to users must be defined under the specific group called ‘Notification Type‘. Multiple messages can be defined for the same ‘Notification Type’ of the selected task. Pre-defined parameters can be used as place holders in subject and message body, while defining the messages. The actual values for these place holders will get replaced accordingly during run time.

Set Priority for Rule

Rules attached to the task will be evaluated and then path will be chosen to route the document. If more than one rule gets satisfied, then there will be more than one path selected. In such instances, we need to give the rule priority to select the relevant path.

Maintain Email ID Information

Using this activity the virtual mailing addresses of the users can be maintained.

Getting familiar with the activities inside