Let us understand?
- What is a Workflow Designer?
- What are the Activities in the Workflow Designer?
- What properties can be defined in the Workflow Designer?
The Workflow Designer allows you to add the required activities from the available list to create the workflow. You can drag the 'Activities' panel into the 'ActivityBuilder' panel and define the 'Properties' for the selected activity to design the workflow. For more information, see Create New Workflow.
The following block diagram illustrates the actions that can be done in the Workflow Designer:
In the Workflow Designer page, you can perform the following actions:
To navigate to the Workflow Designer page:
- On the navigation menu, click Configurations > Workflow Designer app.
Result: The Workflow Designer page displayed.
- Select the existing workflow from the Select Workflow drop-down.
Result: The workflow related activities and actions are displayed in the following panels:
| Pointers | Panels | Description |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Activities | The left panel of the Workflow Designer page allows you to design a workflow. This panel displays the following: •Split indicates that the workflow enters the parallel steps. Each step within the parallel flow is part of a sequential group, assigned with sequence numbers. These numbers help the UI display the steps in an organized and visually parallel manner. This activity is associated with a sequence number. For more information, see Parallel Workflow Steps. • Human Activities require human work or approval to complete the activities. This activity requests the user to specify the properties to perform certain tasks, and then waits for an acknowledgment from the same user. • Human Approval: This activity requests the user to specify the properties to perform a certain task, such as Approve or Reject, to process the business flow. • System Activities are a set of activities that are processed by the system without any human intervention. Note that, Publish is a system activity. • Merge indicates that the transition is exiting the parallel step and must wait for the completion of all other parallel steps before proceeding. This activity is associated with a sequence number. For more information, see Parallel Workflow Steps. Note: You can add multiple outbound flows from a Human Approval activity to other activities like Human Work, Publish, System Activity, and End activity. |
| 2 | Activity Builder | The center panel of the Workflow Designer displays Human Work Activity, Human Approval Activity, and System Activity activities that are dragged and dropped to create the workflow flowchart. You can create, link, move, edit, and delete the activities and actions that are represented in the flowchart manner. Drag and drop the activity in the Activity Builder panel and enter the values. For more information, see Overview of System Activity |
| 3 | Properties | The right panel displays the Human Work Activity, Human Approval Activity and System Activity properties that are used to create the workflow. Enter the values for the properties in their respective fields. You can edit these properties based on your requirement. |
You can add only one End activity when you create or edit a workflow using Workflow Designer. If you drag and drop or copy and paste more than one End activity to a workflow in the Activity Builder, the application displays "Multiple 'End' activities are not supported" Error message. A sample screenshot is displayed.
Activities Panel
The Activities panel consists of Human Work, Human Approval, and System activity. A sample screenshot of the Human Work, Human Approval, and System activity and displayed in the Activities panel.
In the Workflow Designer page,
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Select the Human Activity from the Activities panel.
Result: The activity is displayed in the Activity Builder.
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Enter the required values in the property text box. The following screenshots depicts the Activity Properties panel.
| Activities Properties | Description |
|---|---|
| Allowed Roles | Select the allowed role(s) from the drop-down. The role that you select is the one who can act on this activity. Users who are associated with these roles can also act on this activity. |
| Allowed Users | Select the allowed user(s) from the drop-down. The role that you select is the user who can act on this activity. |
| Assignment Type | The workflow provides various assignment options, which helps in assigning human activities to users. The following are the assignment types: • Least Queue Size: Assigns the control flow to a user specified in Allowed Users and Allowed Roles having the least count of pending activities. • Queue: Does not assign control flow to any user. Queues the activity in an unassigned pool. The activity is visible to all the users specified in the 'Allowed Users' and 'Allowed Roles' in an unassigned pool. The user has to select the activity. The selected activity is not visible to any other user except for the selected user. • Business Rule: Define a business rule, which identifies the user and assigns the activity to that user. • Previous User On Re-entry: Assign the activity to the user who previously acted on that entity in that activity. • Creator: Assign the activity to the user who created the entity. • Assign To Invoker: Assign the activity to the user who has invoked the workflow. Note: For any assignment, it is mandatory to specify the Allowed Roles. |
| Display Name | Specify the name of the human activity. This is a mandatory field. |
| Sequence | Specify the activity sequence in the workflows. Note: Each sequence must be a unique user defined sequence ID to avoid any potential issues. |
| Default Action | Specify the default Action for that specific human activity. |
Action Properties
The action property is part of Human Activities. A sample screenshot depicts the Action Properties panel in the Workflow Designer page.
| Action Properties | Description |
|---|---|
| Display Name | Specify the name of the Human activity. This is a mandatory field. |
| Activity name | Specify the activity name. |
| Comments mode | Select the comment mode from the drop-down that you wish to comment on the action. This is a mandatory field. |
Best Practices
Below are a few constraints on the Least Queue Size auto-assignment rule:
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Max number of supported users for each unique entity type + workflow + step
(union of allowedUsers + users belonging to allowedRoles configured for a workflow step)- Up to 15000 unique users.
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In case of any misconfiguration, or failure in retrieving or parsing the auto-assignment rule, the entity/workflow/step will remain unassigned.
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In case the system doesn’t find any existing assignments based on aggregated queries of visualization data, either because visualization is not enabled for the relevant entity type, or lack of relevant visualization data for a specific entity/workflow/step combination, the system will randomly pick a user to assign from the union of allowedUsers and users belonging to allowedRoles.