Advanced workflow components overview
You use the Advanced Workflow Components applications to plan, design, build, test, and manage workflow processes. Workflow provides a means of electronically reproducing business processes so that they can be applied to records.
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, through the use of logical branching.
You can create a workflow process for any business object. Because all the applications are associated with Maximo® business objects and can run a customer-developed Java™ class or script, you can build workflow processes for any application, including cloned and custom applications.
Workflow handles assignments in a flexible manner. Assignees can receive notifications of assignments in their Workflow Inbox or in their e-mail 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 e-mail notifications 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 launch 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.
Workflow automation or 'runbook automation' is used to refer to process automation capabilities for IT operations teams. The ability to automate processes is of utmost importance to all IT Operations organizations; the main goals being to reduce labor costs, and to reduce the risk of human error in performing intricate, tedious, and repetitive tasks.
Workflows can be exposed to IT personnel who need to run repeatable procedures in several different contexts:
- User- or tool-driven automation workflow procedures
- Service flow-driven automation workflow procedures
- Process-driven automation workflow procedures
- Ticket-based automation workflow procedures
- Web Services driven automation workflow procedures
In the most simple of scenarios, run book automation provides straightforward value. In addition to the simple documentation of the steps to perform, workflow-based automation provides for automation at two levels: sequencing the steps in the task and connecting tool-based automation to steps in the workflow.
Actions provide access to a variety of built-in capabilities, including the ability to:
- Initiate an application action
- Change the status of a record
- Execute a custom class or a specified executable program
- Execute an automation script
- Set the value of a field on a record
The Advanced Workflow Components comes with number of Web Services that help you automate your workflow processes. For more information, see the Advanced Workflow Components Web Services technote on the product support site: http://www.ibm.com/support/