Introduction

Dynamic Workflows Defined

Dynamic workflows are tools that administrators can create to orchestrate business practices, or perhaps to control UI automation. A good example might be controlling which buttons show up for particular user roles during a process. Think of workflows as defining small actions into a larger flow. There are different types of workflows referred to as workflow families. Each workflow family corresponds to a particular client application: Editor, Designer, Mobile, and Solution Center. They are distinct from one another and are not interchangeable. In other words, you cannot export one workflow family and import it into a different type of workflow family. Available node actions differ within each workflow family type.

Hosted versus Client-Side

The two main categories of workflows are hosted and client-side. A good way to think about these categories is where these business processes run: on a hosted platform or on the client’s computer or device. A couple examples of hosted workflows are Session Manager and Designer workflows. These hosted workflows can publish service bus messages and work with service bus infrastructure. They can be triggered via a schedule or when a specific action happens. Hosted workflows usually include movement of work across systems. A good example of this might be the movement of data from a Work Management System to Mobile to Designer XI to Editor XI. Client-side workflows have more to do with an individual user’s experience within a particular application on their computer or device, for instance, when a button appears on their user interface.

Using Session Manager as an example, the entire flow of sessions from creation to completion is a hosted workflow. Open Session would be an example of an Editor Client-side workflow. The XI series provides a number of out-of-the-box (OOTB) workflows for each workflow family that are available to use as is or can be modified to suit your company’s needs.

A Closer Look

Let’s take a closer look at an example of a hosted workflow, Session Manager Workflow. When you want to create more complex workflows in Session Manager, for example, you can customize OOTB workflows by using node actions.

OOTB assignment types come with two- and three-state workflows. The Hosted subtab on the Default Workflow Studio tab in Solution Center provides OOTB workflows that you can select from the drop-down. Two-state default workflows move assignments from Edit to Approval, whereas three-state workflows move them from Edit to Review to Approval. Then assignments move to Geodatabase Manager (GDBM) for posting. For those companies without a GDBM implementation, assignments are closed when a version is reconciled and posted to default.

Complicated integrations with a WMS often require capturing statuses and the progression of each work request that originates from the WMS. You can create assignment types, with roles assigned to each, that equate to a status in the WMS and that need to progress through certain workflows.

When you customize workflows, you end up overriding the default workflow, potentially resulting in processing assignments more quickly to handle numerous assignment types and statuses without compromising any running workflows.

While OOTB workflows provide a method of quickly building various types of workflows, customizing them helps you, for instance, create an associated session each time a work request is created. Additionally, updates sent between different assignment types might need to be captured. Node actions provide ways to customize functionality and inject code without negatively impacting other running processes.

On the Studio tab, you can select a workflow from the drop-down and customize it by selecting an action from the Insert Node Action list, which places the code directly into the codeblock where your cursor sits.