Examples of Linking Flows

When you submit a flow, you can link it to one or more completed flows from the Linked Flows section of the flow submission page.

Your data security access controls which flows you can view and submit, and therefore, which flows you can link.

This topic explains how you can link flows. You can link them at the beginning or end of a flow, or within an active flow, as explained here. Each of these options include several examples of linking flows.

Link a Flow at the Beginning or End of Another Flow

Submit a flow and link it to the beginning of a flow that you haven't started or to the end of a completed flow. For example, submit the costing of payments flow and link it to the end of a completed QuickPay and payments distribution flow to cost the payments for both flows.

Here's an example of submitting a report flow and linking it to the end of the prepayments flow to view the prepayments results in the report.

This example illustrates submitting a flow to cost payments and linking it to a monthly and weekly payroll flow to process the combined results.

Link a Flow Within an Active Flow

You can't combine two flows that are in progress, but you can insert a new flow into an active flow.

• You can do this to perform tasks in an activity, such as the payments or accounting activity.

• You can link flows to process two sets of records in a single prepayments process. For example, if you remove records for correction from the regular payroll run flow, and then process them with several QuickPay flows, you can merge them to calculate the QuickPay payments.

When you link flows, consider whether the submitted flow includes the same tasks as the active flow after the insertion point as given here.

Tasks After Insertion Point	Action
Same tasks	Select the Use to Calculate Results option to process the results of both flows in the remaining tasks
Different tasks	Specify where to stop the active flow and complete tasks in the submitted flow before returning to the active flow

This figure shows the sequence of tasks processed if you submit a QuickPay flow and link it to the payroll run flow for the same payroll and payroll period to process the payments tasks together. After the payroll calculation in the payroll run flow completes, the QuickPay calculation starts. The application waits to run the Gross-to-Net task until the task to verify the QuickPay results complete. The application skips the remaining tasks of the QuickPay flow, which are the same as the payroll run flow, and uses the results of the QuickPay flow in the payroll run flow.

This figure shows the sequence of tasks processed if you submit a QuickPay flow and select the option to use the results of the QuickPay calculation in the reports generated for the payroll run flow. In this example, the flows don't include the same tasks. After the payroll calculation in the regular run completes, the QuickPay calculation starts. After the QuickPay verification task completes, the application processes the two reports that include the results of the QuickPay flow. The application returns to the QuickPay flow to process the external payment. After the QuickPay payment verification task completes, the application processes the payments for the regular run.