Workflow

Introduction

The Agile e6 Workflow module enables you to design workflow processes as a sequence of consecutive activities with assignments of individual resources (users, groups, roles, or distribution lists). Workflow processes can help facilitate teamwork and cooperation for work groups involved in organizational processes. Moreover, workflow processes can improve task-oriented communications and accelerate execution of business processes.

The Workflow module sends information and work items to individual users for execution. New work items can be triggered through completion of a predecessor work item. The processing order of work items can be either sequential (serial) or in parallel. As soon as a work item is marked as complete by the user who is responsible for this work item, the follow-up work item is forwarded to the Inbox of the responsible user.

The diagram below is a schematic representation of the steps from the definition of a Work Request to the completion of the Work Order. In this example, a Work Request (that specifies why some work is necessary/desirable) is released and thus promoted to a Work Order. Work Orders comprise possible solutions and reference to a specific workflow process. You can assign a workflow process also to a Work Request. All affected objects related to a Work Order (items, processes, documents) are collected together in the Affected Objects tab, thus ensuring that all objects are processed together. In the messages sent out to individual users, predefined workflow activities are represented by work items with descriptions of the work to be completed.

If the Workflow module is run in conjunction with the Enhanced Change Management module, affected objects related to a Work Order are (normally) replaced by detailed change operations in the Change Operations tab.

 

Workflow Design

The Workflow Editor enables you to define workflow processes. Your processes are represented by nodes and connecting lines that can be added and edited using toolbars and buttons.

The way process components are displayed can be defined in a style sheet. This style sheet can be customized to customer-specific requirements (corporate design, etc.). Therefore, the graphics used in the documentation can differ from your display!

 

Workflow Services

The Workflow Services comprises the following components: These components control:

The following diagram illustrates the interaction of different workflow service components in the Agile e6 workflow module:

Executor

The Executor is the core component of the Agile e6 Workflow Services and has the following tasks:

Notifier

The notifier is a permanently running service which is responsible for information transfer.

This service does not influence parallel running notifiers.

Messenger

The messenger is a sup-component of the Notifier to send information to the user. In the moment only email is supported. The messenger creates emails and sends them to the recipients. Email notifications contain predefined text and a reference to the appropriate work item description. All email notifications contain hyperlink references to the inbox, work item, or process console, depending on the underlying event of the recipient.

For the email notification the Messenger uses html- or text-layout files, or in case of XML generation, XSLT files. These files are stored in the following folder:
Agile e6 root/axalant/lay/notifier

  • Message: Used for notifications (newly created work items), forwarded and (after forward) rejected work items.
  • InitReject: Used for inital rejected work items (reject to the system).
  • Reminder1: Used for notifications to the user because of a due activity.
  • Reminder2: Used for notifications to the user because of an overdue activity.
  • ProcessResp: Used to inform the process responsible user because of an overdue activity.
  • AlertUser: Used to inform the alert user instead of the process responsible user because of an overdue activity.
  • InitialError: Used to inform the process responsible user because of an error during startup of a background activity or process.
  • ProcessingActivityError: Used to inform the process responsible user because of an error during execution of a bachground activity.
  • ProcessingProcessError: Used to inform the process responsible user because of an error during execution of a bachground process.
  • GeneralError: Used to inform the Admin user if any error during messenging happend (e.g. missing email address etc.).
  • Status Change: Optional, a free text with max. 2000 characters to inform about the status / status changes.
Since an ordinary user won't be able to handle general errors due to limited access rights, it is required to insert values for ADMIN_UIC in the messenger section of the abs.ini file!

This admin user should be able to enter, change, or delete person data. Also, this person should be allowed to suspend and resume processes and to change resource entries in the activity list of the process.
For further information please refer to "privileges" in the Role Concept module.

Watchdog

The watchdog identifies new or changed work items in the work item list, checks whether a notification is desired or necessary and asks the Messenger to inform the corresponding user.

The user must be defined as person and a user ID must have been assigned to the user. Users must have a valid email address for email notifications. Notification is not possible unless an email address has been specified!

The watchdog component monitors due and overdue activities and handles background activities. The corresponding work items for due activities are identified and the messenger component is triggered in order to notify the assigned resources by email. If the work item has not yet been accepted by a resource, the messenger component will notify all recipients of the work item. If the work item has been accepted, only the resource that accepted will be notified. Once a work item becomes due or overdue, an email notification is sent to the user. In case it is overdue, the so-called Alert User is also notified, or the process owner of the workflow process, if no alert user has been defined for the corresponding activity.

The alert user helps to name an alternative resource if the user responsible for a process - the user who started the process - is not to be informed in case of Reminder2 (overdue) message.

Since the release of Agile e6.0 the message templates for one single file do not exist any longer. This is to enable the collection and sending of news of the same tpye. Therefore, message templates now contain a header, a text part (which can appear several times) and a footer.

Permission Manager

When more than one permission manager is used, the cache will be automatically synchronized after a set period of time.

The following entries in the ABS...ini for the module [PermissonManager] influence this behaviour. The module contains the following entries:

To activate the prmCache, set it to true (default).

In case the prmCache entry is missing in the ABS..ini, the cache is activated by default. To disable the caching, set prmCache=false.

The PrmPeriod defines the time between two checks of the prm time stamp on the database. In case something relevant happened for the permission manager during this period of time, the prm time stamp was changed on the database.

The value for PrmPeriod is formatted in hours:minutes (format: hh:mm). Default is 10 minutes.

When using only one permissing manager and after creating a new user, the cache for the permission manager has to be reloaded manually in the user or role mask, otherwise the user is unknown to the system.

How to make newly created users available in the workflow management

 

Batch

The watchdog also triggers socalled background or batch activities/processes.

The following actions are performed:

While executing the batch activities on a separate running EDM server, every information, e.g. success, error, will be reported in the corresponding activity or process history.

Processes for Various User Types

Most important default values and definitions differentiate between the following user types:

The illustrations in the sections below are schematic representations of these user types.

Tasks of the Workflow Designer

The following questions should be answered prior to the software-based definition of a workflow process.

Once the preparation of a workflow process template is completed it can be defined in Agile e6.

 

 

Tasks of the Workflow Process Responsible User (Initiator), or Alert User

 

Tasks of the Workflow Participant

 

Tasks of the Workflow Administrators