Components of a Flow

Before you begin to use flow patterns, let's walk you through a delivered flow pattern to understand flow components.

Use the Payroll Flow Patterns task under Payroll in My Client Groups to search and select a flow pattern. For example, search for the predefined Calculate Payroll flow and click Edit. While creating your own flow pattern, select field options or values as given in this table.

Field	Description
Flow Status	Use this field to define how you can submit the flow. Select one of these options: Active flow, to submit the flow from the flow submission page or to include the flow in automated flow submissions. Inactive flow, to submit the flow through automated flow submissions. The flow isn't available for submission on the flow submission page. Hidden flows aren't available for submission.
Connector Status	Use this field to decide what you want to include in the flow results. Select either of these options: Task Flow, to consolidate results generated from tasks within the current flow and those from other connected flows. Parameters Only flow, to include results generated from tasks within the flow. It doesn't include results from any additional flows.
Connector Name	Use this field to identify the flow pattern for the purpose of flow connector rules. This field is defaulted to the name of your flow pattern.
LDG Required	Use this field to determine availability of the flow to other legislative data groups (LDGs). Select either of these options: Yes, to restrict the flow to a single LDG. No, to indicate that the flow is available to all other LDGs.

Flow Connectors

Tasks

Use the Connector tab to link flows at the flow pattern level and consolidate flow results for downstream processing. Use the Connected Flows field to select flows you want to connect to consolidate payroll results. The rules are automatically applied to all instances of the flow and you don't have to manually define connector rules each time you submit the flow.

Review the task list, and if necessary, add new tasks to the flow pattern. You can edit the task name, description, and its placement in an activity or task group.

The Activity and Task Group define how the submitted flow instance is viewed hierarchically in the Checklist. In this example, the activity is 'Calculate' and the task group is 'Calculate and Validate Payroll'.

Edit the task to update the task parameters, owner and checklist information, and which notifications to send the task owner.

Process After Error

Optionally, select the Process after Error check box against a task, to allow a subsequent task to process, even if an immediately preceding task is in error. This ensures continuation of the flow.

For example if you have a flow with tasks, A ->B -> C, task B can't run if task A is in error, unless you select Process after Error for task B. Similarly, task C will run irrespective of the status of task B, if you select Process after Error for task C. After you complete the flow, you can view the errors, make corrections, roll back the errors, and resubmit the flow, if required.

Task Sequence

Since there is only one task for this flow, the sequence of the flow tasks is Start Flow > Calculate Payroll > End Flow.

For more complex multi-task flows, use the Task Sequence tab to review the task sequence and reorder, add or delete tasks, as required. Some tasks within the flow use and build upon the results of a previous task.

Flow Parameters

Use the Parameters tab to define flow parameters, some of which you manually enter while submitting the flow, and the others are default or derived values. Define the properties of the parameters here. For example, indicate if a parameter is mandatory or optional, display the parameter on the UI or not, display format, and so on.

Flow Notifications

Use the Outbound Integration tab to configure an outbound notification with the payroll flows outbound API notifications feature. Once a task in a flow completes, it sends a completion message to an external downstream server. The server gets an automatic notification once the task completes, and it then triggers downstream non-payroll processes.

Review

Use the Review tab to preview how the flow is organized and displayed on the Checklist page.