Overview
Applications: GSM
Focus Area: GSM Activity Specification Enhancements
An activity is a workflow enabled object that can be used with other specifications or objects. Activities can be useful in the following scenarios:
· Managing Parallel Work—As an ingredient specification is moving through its workflow a user may choose to launch a nutritional review. This review can be modeled as a GSM activity working in parallel with the ingredient specification’s workflow. In addition you can choose to create a linkage between the activity and the specification to support business rules such as, “A specification cannot move to an “Approved” status if a nutritional review has been initiated and has not yet been completed.”
· Managing a Group of Activities—A given activity can be linked to one or many specifications or objects. This is useful if there is a single approval for all objects. Examples include: Linking multiple smart issue requests to an activity for approval or linking a number of specifications where a similar change must be performed.
· Providing A Notification to Specification Readers—Activities can be configured to provide an informational notification when users open a specification for reading. These notifications may be of value if a temporary condition exists impacting a group of specifications or an impending change is being considered.
· Activities are based on workflow templates managed in the Workflow Administration application (WFA). For more on WFA, please see the Agile Product Lifecycle for Process Administrator User Guide.
The Basics
In 6.0 GSM activities have been enhanced in a number of specific ways. In this document we will call out each and provide a screen shot to help further describe each:
1. The specification’s Activity Reference section now shows all activities associated with the specification (primary and related). Primary activities are activities directly created from the specification. Related activities are activities created independently of a specification.
a) Create a Related Activity by using the left hand navigation to get to activities and click Create New.
b) In the following example, an activity is created and related to three ingredient specifications. Note that Reference this Activity on the above Specifications is marked.
Figure 1. Related activities
Figure 2. Activity on specification
2. Inactive/Effective dates have been added to all related activities. The activity’s inactive date can control whether that activity appears on the specification.
3. The GSM specification reader can now be notified through a specification notification panel when an activity is on the specification.
a)
Let’s review #2 & #3 together. Note the
Inactive Date and the Notify Specification Reader of this activity.
Figure 3. Inactive Date and the Notify Specification Reader
b)
If
the date is
less than the inactive date and the activity is marked to notify then the user
will see the following message when opening the specification.
Figure 4. Message
4. Activity Summary Printing now includes the activity’s related specifications, extended attributes, and new inactive/effective dates.
a) From a specification associated to an activity, click on Print and select Include Activity Summary.
Figure 5. Include Activity Summary field
b) By printing with this selection you will receive a section similar to the following:
Figure 6. Printed activity sample
