Understanding PeopleTools Workflow Technology Setup for PeopleSoft Purchasing

Use PeopleSoft Application Designer and PeopleSoft Workflow Administrator to use the workflow processes that are delivered with PeopleSoft Purchasing. You can also use PeopleSoft Application Designer to design and build your own business processes, including workflow rules. You use PeopleSoft Workflow Administrator to access, monitor, analyze, and control workflow in your organization.

PeopleTools Workflow Technology can be used to:

• Approve transactions. For example, PeopleTools Workflow Technology can route requisitions or purchase orders through the approval process to ensure that the transactions are approved before moving forward in the business process.

• Send workflow notifications to managers, buyers, requesters, and other users about events and actions that are relevant to them. For example, PeopleTools Workflow Technology can notify the appropriate buyer when a POA is received that requires buyer approval before being processed.

Use PeopleSoft Application Designer to build the workflow business process for PeopleTools Workflow Technology. The workflow process is based on rules, roles, and routings.

Rule Set Up

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.

Role and User Set Up

Users are the people who participate in one or more workflow processes. Users can be PeopleSoft users, as well as people and groups who don't have direct access to PeopleSoft applications, but rather send or receive data using workflow. For example, if your workflow delivers electronic order forms to suppliers, your suppliers are users.

When you build a workflow, you identify the users who perform each activity according to their roles in the organization and in the workflow. The process of approving a purchase order transaction, for example, may involve the roles of buyer, purchasing analyst, and manager. When the system routes a work item to the next activity in a business process, it forwards the item to the users who fill the role that is assigned to that activity. In some cases, you may define multiple users who fill the role. In most cases, the system runs a query to find out who the appropriate users are for a given work item. You define users' roles when you assign user IDs.

Note:

The content of this section is only part of what you need to know to map your business processes. Other information that is common to many applications is located in the PeopleSoft Application Fundamentals 9.2 .

Route Controls Set Up

Route controls further specify which users that belong to a specific role are to receive a workflow item. For instance, you may have a role of manager, but not every manager in the system should receive every purchase order for approval. A particular manager may be responsible for a certain purchase order business unit. Establish the business unit as a route control and assign specific business unit values to specific users. By doing this, you limit the routing of purchase orders from a particular business unit to those managers who should be reviewing those purchase orders.

See the product documentation for PeopleTools: Security Administration