Workflow overview

You use the Workflow application to plan, design, build, test, implement, and manage workflow processes. Workflow provides a means of electronically reproducing business processes so that they can be applied to records.

With workflow, you can manage the movement of a record through a process from start to finish. You can instruct individuals to act on records, specify delegates when workers are unavailable, ensure that individuals act in a timely manner, and ensure that an audit trail exists for each record and process.

Workflow is an integrated part of the software. Workflow processes and their supporting records are at the system level in a multisite implementation. Workflow processes can be used for all organizations and sites. You can design processes or subprocesses that are specific to an organization or specific to a site, by using logical branching.

You can create a workflow process for any business object. Because all the applications are associated with product business objects and can run a customer Java™ class, you can build workflow processes for any application, including cloned and custom applications.

Workflow handles assignments in a flexible manner. You can specify assignee relationships for assignments to create groups of active assignments at run time. Assignees can receive notifications of assignments in their Workflow Inbox or in their email inbox, eliminating the need for users to search for their assignments. Workers or administrators can reassign workflow tasks, stop a process instance, and remove a record from the control of Workflow. You can specify at what point in a process you want email notifications to be generated. Delegates can be specified when workers are unavailable.

A workflow process can run a program, such as a batch file or an .exe file that is stored on a local server in the system directory. A workflow process for one type of record can start a process for another type of record. For example, a service request can launch a process for an incident. A process can contain subprocesses. For example, for different subcategories of records, or records from different sites. When a process requires user interaction, the product can direct a user to a specific application, to a tab, or to an action.