Understanding Extended Workflow Capabilities

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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

A workflow 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.

Workflow activity guides take a single map and integrate it into the pages that are used for the specific transaction. Although workflow 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 workflow activity guides. The workflow activity guide maps are built with the same tools as all other maps.

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 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 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 Understanding Worklist Entries from External Systems.