PeopleSoft Workflow Technology Overview

Workflow capabilities enable you to efficiently automate the flow of information throughout your enterprise, crossing both application and functional boundaries. PeopleSoft Workflow Technology consists of a powerful set of tools that enables you to automate time-consuming business processes and deliver the right information to the right people at the right time. You can merge the activities of multiple users into flexible business processes to increase efficiency, cut costs, and keep up with rapidly changing customer and competitive challenges.

Many of the tasks that you perform throughout the day are part of larger tasks that involve several steps and several people. For example, when you order supplies, you are really initiating an approval process: someone else reviews the order and either approves or denies it. If the order is approved, a purchase order is sent to the vendor. If it is denied, notification is sent back to the person who submitted the original order. The term workflow refers to this larger process.

Using PeopleSoft Workflow Technology requires you to define, step by step, your business processes. The first step in implementing your workflow application is determining the business rules of your organization. This step involves taking fluid, subtle, and sometimes controversial practices and defining explicit rules of operation. Your business rules must be specific enough to give you a solid understanding of your project goals, but not so specific that they predefine a single solution—one that might be impossible to implement or will not provide adequate flexibility.