Understanding PeopleSoft Workflow

This chapter discusses:

• PeopleSoft Workflow.

• Workflow tools.

• Workflow application development.

• Extended workflow capabilities.

Understanding PeopleSoft Workflow

Many of the daily tasks that you perform are part of larger tasks that involve several steps and several people working together. For example, when you enter an invoice, you are initiating an approval and payment process: someone else reviews and approves it, and a third person submits payment to the vendor. The term workflow refers to this larger process.

To a certain extent, all of the business processes that you define using PeopleSoft Application Designer involve workflow. However, we usually reserve the term to refer to processes that involve multiple users and the routing of data between the users.

Understanding Workflow Tools

This section discusses:

• Workflow tools

• Work items

• Workflow triggers

Workflow Tools

You create and use workflow applications using several tools:

• Worklists are prioritized lists of the work items that a person (or group of people) has to do. A worklist is a standard PeopleTools grid; therefore, the user can use grid personalization features to order and sort columns. When work is routed to a PeopleSoft user, it is put in the user’s worklist. To work on an item, the user selects it from the worklist and is presented with the appropriate page to begin work. Users accessing worklists through a browser see worklist entries prioritized in a predefined order (set on a properties page). For example, worklists for accounts receivable clerks can be sorted by days overdue, amount overdue, or credit class.

  Note. The URL/ID field in the worklist grid is an HTML area which cannot be sorted and will not download into a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet.

• PeopleSoft Application Designer includes the tools that you use to design and build business processes, including the workflow rules and routings.

• PeopleCode functions detect when a business rule has been triggered as users enter data into a PeopleSoft application. These functions evaluate who should act on the new work instance (the role) and route it to the appropriate employee (the routing).

• PeopleSoft Workflow Administrator enables you to access, monitor, analyze, and control workflow in your organization.

Work Items

At the center of a workflow definition is a set of business events and the routings that are associated with those events. A business event is a condition that tells the system that an activity is complete. For example, a new record has been created, a record field has a particular value, or a due date has passed. A routing is an instruction that tells the system to forward information to the next step in the business process. It specifies what information to forward and where to forward it.

When a user saves a page, the system determines whether an event has occurred and triggers the associated routings. For example, suppose an employee enters a change of address from an online page. An agent determines that the database has been correctly updated and may then add an item to the benefits administrator’s worklist to notify the insurance provider of the correct address.

In addition to adding work items to worklists, routings can send email messages.

Workflow Triggers

Workflow routings are initiated by Workflow PeopleCode. The PeopleCode is assigned to pages and, when you save a page, it triggers a business event and its related routings.

Any process that can trigger PeopleCode can trigger a workflow event, including:

• Users working in PeopleSoft pages.

• Third-party applications sending information to a PeopleSoft component through a component interface.

• Batch programs or queries sending information to a PeopleSoft component through a component interface. Batch workflow processing uses these tools in addition to the standard workflow tools:

  • Application Engine programs run queries behind the scenes and pass the results to a component interface.

    You can use PeopleSoft Process Scheduler to run these programs on a regular schedule.

  • A component interface accesses the component and its PeopleCode to trigger a business event, thus initiating a workflow.

Understanding Workflow Application Development

This section discusses:

• Rules.

• Roles.

• Routings.

• Steps for developing workflow applications.

Rules

Rules determine which activities are required to process your business data. For example, you might implement a rule that says department managers must approve all requests for external classes.

You implement rules through workflow events, such as PeopleCode that evaluates a condition and triggers a notification (a routing) when appropriate.

Roles

Roles describe how people fit into the workflow. A role is a class of users who perform the same type of work, such as clerks or managers. Your business rules typically specify which roles do which activities. For example, a rule can say that department managers (a role) must approve external course requests.

Roles direct the work to types of people rather than to individuals. Identifying roles instead of individual users makes a workflow more flexible and easier to maintain. Associating roles with users makes it easy to ensure workflow users the security access that they need to access the pages where they complete their work.

Roles remain stable, even as people change jobs. For example, if an employee in the Research and Development (R&D) department requests an external class, the system forwards the request to R&D Manager, not to Vic Rumpel, who is the current R&D manager. PeopleSoft application data serves as the basis for defining roles throughout your organization.

Routings

Routings specify where the information goes and what form it takes: email message or worklist entry. Routings make it possible to deploy applications throughout the enterprise. They work through the levels and departments of an enterprise to bring together all of the roles that are necessary to complete complex tasks.

Steps for Developing Workflow Applications

Workflow development progresses through eight steps:

1. Design the workflow application.

   Before you start developing workflow applications, analyze the business processes that you want to automate. Identify the goal of each business process, what its component tasks are, and how the tasks should be divided into smaller activities and steps. Articulate the conditions that trigger a workflow event and what happens when those conditions occur. Understand who your workflow users are and how you’ll determine who receives a work item.

   As you design the workflow application, identify the workflow rules and how they relate to the data objects and transactions in the PeopleSoft system.

2. Build the underlying application.

3. Create workflow maps.

   Use PeopleSoft Application Designer to create graphical maps that represent your business process. At this stage, you create maps only for the processes that are involved in the underlying application; you add PeopleSoft Workflow-specific elements to the maps when you define events and routings.

4. Define roles and users.

   Define users’ roles when you give them their user IDs. Roles are important in PeopleSoft Workflow. To ensure that work flows to the correct person, you must determine who that person is. You can find the right person using either query roles or user list roles.

5. Create a worklist record.

   The worklist record determines which fields of information the system stores for each work item, including the data needed to access the target page (the search keys for the page) and any additional information that you want to display in the worklist itself. Because different worklist entries can have different target pages and display data, you need separate worklist records for the different types of entries that will appear in the worklist.

6. Define workflow objects.

   Events and routings are both objects on the workflow maps. To define these workflow objects, add the icons to the map, linked to the step representing the page where the triggering event occurs.

7. Define event triggers.

   After you create workflow processes, link them into the PeopleSoft applications by adding PeopleCode programs to the pages. The PeopleCode detects when a business rule has been triggered and determines the appropriate action.

8. Test.

   No development is complete until the workflow is thoroughly tested. Be sure to test under a variety of conditions, both usual and unusual.

Understanding Extended Workflow Capabilities

In addition to basic workflow events and routings, PeopleSoft Workflow provides extended capabilities that add to the power of workflow applications.

This section discusses:

• Route controls.

• Workflow triggers from external applications.

• Enterprise Integration Points (EIPs).

• Batch workflow processing.

• Approval processes.

• Activity guides.

• Notification features.

Route Controls

Route controls identify the aspects of a situation on which you want to base routing decisions, and they enable you to associate values with role users. For example, suppose you want to route purchase requisitions to different buyers, depending on which vendor supplies the ordered items, which business unit is requesting the items, which department needs the items, or some combination of these factors.

Route controls simplify the creation of role queries by enabling you to associate application data with the role user definition. Instead of joining together a group of records, you can look at the role user table. Another advantage of route controls is that the factors controlling routing are stored in a database table instead of in query definitions or PeopleCode. To change the routing rules, you change users’ route control profiles. You do not have to modify the business process, role queries, or PeopleCode.

Workflow Triggers from External Applications

A component interface enables third-party applications to enter data into PeopleSoft applications. It accepts data from a variety of sources, such as electronic forms software, interactive voice response (IVR) systems, or web applications, and from PeopleCode and Application Engine programs.

When a component interface sends data into the PeopleSoft system, the system performs the same edits and security checks as it always does, including running any PeopleCode that is associated with the page. Therefore, if the page has associated workflow PeopleCode, then a component interface can trigger a business event.

EIPs

The PeopleSoft application delivers a number of preconfigured EIPs to meet some of the common integration needs. These PeopleSoft Workflow-related EIPs may be particularly useful:

• The Worklist Entry EIP (component interface WORKLISTENTRY) enables third-party applications to access existing worklist entries, mark items as selected or worked, or reassign items to other users.

• The Worklist Synchronization EIP consolidates worklist data from multiple PeopleSoft databases using the application engine program WL_REPLICATE, which publishes worklist data using WORKLIST_MSG.

  Users who would otherwise have to work from multiple worklists (for example, people who use PeopleSoft Workflow in both PeopleSoft HCM and PeopleSoft Financials) can use one worklist and still see all work items from both sources.

  Third-party applications can also use this EIP to create new worklist entries, entries that can include a URL for the action that must be taken.

• The Worklist EIP (component interface WORKLIST) enables third-party applications to add new entries to PeopleSoft worklists.

  This method is not the preferred way to add worklist entries. The preferred method is to use a component interface for a component that already calls TriggerBusinessEvent and to let TriggerBusinessEvent create the worklist entry. Another alternative is to use the Worklist Synchronization EIP.

• Third-party applications can use a web service request message to create worklist entries for a task that is external to a PeopleSoft application. The web service provides a reply message when the worklist item is marked complete.

Batch Workflow Processing

Sometimes, the event that triggers a workflow routing is actually a nonevent. That is, a situation exists but not because someone entered data into the system. The most common examples of this type of event are aging processes. For example, an invoice becomes overdue, an employee reaches his five-year anniversary, or a worklist entry remains unworked for more than a week.

PeopleSoft Application Engine enables you to monitor your database for this type of event. You can create an Application Engine program that runs a SQL query against the PeopleSoft database and passes the results to a component interface.

Using Application Engine programs in conjunction with PeopleSoft Process Scheduler, you can monitor the database tables for conditions that should trigger workflow events.

Approval Processes

Approval processes are a common form of business process, and you can define approval rules on an Approval Rule Set map. The approval steps that you place on this map represent the approval levels required for the activity in question.

Two tools can read and implement the approval rules from the map:

• Virtual Approver automatically tracks the approval process. As users complete transactions that require approvals, Virtual Approver determines the appropriate approver and sends a workflow routing. As each approver completes the approval, Virtual Approver determines whether additional approvals are needed and, if necessary, sends additional workflow routings.

• GetApprovers PeopleCode determines the entire list of required approvals at once, so that you can develop custom approval tracking applications.

Activity Guides

Activity guides support a specific type of workflow: a single user’s work across several pages. Because activity guides are intended for a single user, they do not involve routings like those found in a regular workflow application. Rather, the activity guide leads a user through a multistep task.

An activity guide appears as a navigation bar across the top of a page. Within the bar, you can see each of the steps involved in the activity. Clicking a step takes you to the page where you can complete the step; the navigation bar remains visible as you move from page to page.

Activity guides take a single map and integrate it into the pages that are used for the specific transaction. Although activity guides can benefit all users, they are particularly appropriate for guiding untrained users through self-service transactions.

Of the two kinds of workflow maps (business processes and activities), only activities are used for activity guides. The activity guide maps are built with the same tools as all other maps.

Notification Features

Within an activity definition, an event can trigger a notification routing in email or a worklist. These features facilitate sending notifications in workflow:

• The Notify toolbar button can be added to any PeopleSoft component.

  With the Notify toolbar button, the user can determine when an event has occurred that requires that someone be notified. The Notify toolbar button opens the Send Notification page, where the user can enter a personal message and send an email or worklist notification to users.

• Notification templates enable functional users to configure unique message text for each component.

  The notification template can include values from the component page (for example, order number and customer name) so that even the predefined text in the notification can be specific to the data on the page. These values are called template variables.

• The BlackBerry Email Response notification setup and polling program enables companies to leverage the functionality of the Research in Motion (RIM) wireless handheld device to send and receive email.

  The email response from the device can trigger business logic in the PeopleSoft system to update or complete a transaction.

• The combination of generic templates and PeopleCode application classes can be used by application developers to extend the delivered notification features for an application.

Worklist Feeds

Worklist feeds provide the ability to publish a user's worklist as a feed in real time. By using worklist feeds, the worklist items can be available from systems other than the system that originated the entries without copying the data. Worklist feeds use the Feed Publishing Framework for delivering feeds. PeopleTools 8.50 delivers the WORKLIST feed data type used to publish worklist feeds.

Worklist feeds are real-time feeds. The feed is generated in the security context of the signed on user and reflects the user's current worklist items. It does not show worked or old items.

See Creating and Using Worklist Feeds.