Summary

Work Flow Templates are used to create process work flows in the application. There are two kinds of work flow notification alerts: Information and Approval.

• Information - When a user completes a step, an email notification will be sent to any Springbrook user specified in the notification window.
• Approval - When a user completes a step, an email notification must be sent to a specific user who must approve the step. This user can decline the step, which means a notification is sent back to the user that originally completed the step. The user will still be able to select the next step on the palette.

Step by Step

1     View the work flow templates that have been created.

• Open the Work Flow Template Selection window (SS> Maintenance> Work Flow Templates).
• The Work Flow Template Selection window will display all work flow templates that have been created in the application.
• Highlight a template and click the Delete icon to delete the selected template.
• Highlight a template and click the Modify icon to open the selected template.
• Click the Create icon to create a new work flow template. This will open the Work Flow Template window.

2     Modify or create a work flow template on the General tab.

• The Type drop-down menu is used to select the type of work flow generated by the template.
  • Select Process if you would like the work flow to be process driven.
    • For example, select Process if you would like a user or position to receive an email when a palette has reached the Commit step.
  • Select Individual if you would like the work flow approver to be able to accept or reject individual items within a process.
    • For example, an approver can look at an entire Purchase Order batch and reject an individual PO without holding up the entire batch. The rejected PO can be removed by the author and added to a new PO batch. This way the original batch can still be processed without completely deleting the rejected PO.
• The Sub System drop-down menu is used to select the module of the work flow. For example, select Purchase Orders if you would like to generate a work flow in the Purchase Orders module.
  • The selection in this field and the Process field will also affect the information that displays on the Steps tab.
• The Process drop-down menu is used to select the batch process you would like to generate the work flow in. The processes that populate in this drop-down menu depend on the module selected in the Sub System field.
• The Department drop-down menu is used to select a department that will be responsible for completing the work flow. Departments are user-created groups of employees.
• Enter an optional description of the work flow in the Description field.
  • The work flow description will display on the Work Flow Selection window, so you may want to use this field to differentiate between two or more work flows that involve the same system and process.
• Check the Active toggle if you would like the work flow to be available in the designated process immediately.
  • The Active toggle will be checked by default.
  • If you experience issues with a newly-implemented work flow template, uncheck this box to deactivate the work flow and contact Springbrook Support.

3     Add or modify the steps of the work flow on the Steps tab.

• The Steps tab is used to create and modify the steps on the work flow.
• The steps attached to the work flow will display in the Steps field.
  • Highlight a step in the Steps field and the fields in the Details section will populate with the information on the selected step.
  • Highlight a step, click the Delete icon drop-down menu and select Remove Step to delete the selected step.
  • Click the Create icon drop-down menu and select Add Step from the menu to create a new work flow step.
    • New work flow steps will not affect open batches. The new work flow step will only be applied to batches created after the work flow step has been created.
  • Use the Up and Down icons to arrange the steps in the desired order.
• The Summary field is used to enter a description of the step.
• The Wait field is used to specify a wait period between action notification alerts.
  • If more than one action notification recipient is set up in the Notification field, the value in the Wait field will determine how soon the second recipient will be notified if no response is received from the first recipient. For example, if 1.00 is entered the second recipient will be notified one hour after the first recipient if the first recipient does not respond.
  • Information notification alerts are only subject to the wait period if they are set up to occur after an action notification alert. For example, you could set up both primary and secondary action notification alerts with an information notification alert in between. In this case, the primary action alert would be sent when the work flow is generated. If that action alert times out, both the information alert and the secondary action alert would be generated at the same time.
  • If the work flow progresses through all of the designated action notification recipients without receiving an approval, the work flow will be rejected.
  • If the wait is set to zero, the action notification will wait for approval indefinitely.
• The Action drop-down menu is used to select the action that will be performed by the step. The actions that display in this menu will be determined by the sub system and process selected on the General tab.
• Check the This step requires an electronic signature toggle to require that the user that approves the step provide an electronic signature for the approval. This feature has not been implemented.
• The Primary Entity and Child Entity fields are used to create an argument that will determine if a notification should be generated for the work flow step.
  • In order for a notification to be generated, the process that is running must meet the specifications set up in the Primary Entity Criteria section.
  • Double click on a field label in the Fields section to add that field to the Criteria section. Enter an operator and specify a value for the argument in quotation marks. For example, if you created a work flow for the purchase orders process and you want to require an approval for any purchase order associated with a particular vendor, you would select Vendor Number from the fields list, add an equals sign to the argument and enter the desired vendor number in quotation marks. For vendor number 00125, the argument would look like this:

PO_Purchase_Order_Change.Vendor_No = "00125"

• Use the Child Entity field to add additional filtering arguments. The Child Entity arguments will only be used if the Primary Entity requirements are satisfied.
• Leave the Primary Entity field blank to configure the work flow step to generate a notification every time it is run.

• The Notification field is used to add users or positions that will be notified by the work flow step.
  • Click the Create icon drop-down menu and select Add Notification Recipient. This will open the Role Selection window.
  • Select a role in the left section of the window and the Maintenance section will populate with the information attached to the selected role.
  • Click the Confirm icon to select the highlighted role and return to the Work Flow Template window.
    • Add additional notification recipients in the order that you would like the recipients to receive the notification.
  • Once a role has been added to the Notification section, a drop-down menu to the right of the role allows you to select either Action or Information.
    • Select Action if the notification recipient is required to approve the work flow step.
    • Select Information if the notification recipient is only required to receive a notification that the step has been completed.
  • Notification recipients can be deleted by clicking the Delete icon drop-down menu and selecting Remove Notification Recipient.
  • When a step is completed and a work flow is generated, the system will produce emails for notification recipients as well as an email for the user that is processing the batch.
  • The user will also receive an email as soon as an action notification is approved or rejected.
    • In order to receive notification email generated by a work flow, each user account must be set up properly on the User Preferences window (User Preferences icon on the main application window> General tab> select Email from the Alert Method drop-down menu).
• The Summary Fields section is used to specify a field value trigger for the work flow step.
  • This can be useful if an approval should be requested or a notification sent only in the event that a specific value is exceeded. For example, if the department head approval is needed for an Invoices batch that exceeds $5,000.00, the Summary field could be set up to display Amount > 5000.
  • When creating a PR Timesheets Approval work flow, the Field column will automatically populate with Supervisor. This allows you to route individual timesheets specified in the Entity fields to the supervisors specified in the Summary Fields Value column.
• Click the Save icon when complete to save the work flow.