To track work within a business process, a participant (most often a manager) periodically checks the status of the work. For example, the manager can request that the employees produce status reports using e-mail or the manager can hold weekly status meetings. The purpose of these efforts is to communicate where within the business process the work currently resides. A manager who understands the status of the work can make appropriate decisions about who must perform subsequent tasks.
After a request is submitted for review, the manager or other reviewer is then responsible for deciding whether to approve or deny the request. In the workflow process, the labels (submit, approve, and deny) quickly communicate the state of the work at a given point in the process and who is responsible for the next task.
NOTE:A state is a label that identifies the result of a completed task and that indicates who is responsible for performing a subsequent task in the process (if any).
For example, a user submits a form to HR indicating that he wants to take a vacation day. After the user has finished filling in the Time Off Request form, the state transitions to Submit. Later in the process, after the request is entered into the Time Off database, the state transitions to the Record state.
NOTE:A transition indicates that work moved from one workflow state to another.
One or more discrete actions must be taken with the work in order for its state to change; however, a task can be composed of more than one discrete action. With an online workflow process, some actions can be automated. For example, after a user completes a form and clicks , Novell Teaming can automatically transition the work to the Submit state and can notify the manager through e-mail that the Time Off request is ready for review. As another example, the work can transition to Deny, if more than ten days of inaction occur.
Other actions require that a participant use the workflow-management system to manually report the status of work. For example, before a manager begins reviewing the request, he or she can select a label from a drop-down list that indicates that the work is to transition to the Review state. As another example, while in the Review state, the manager can manually select the Deny label.
NOTE:A state transition occurs when one or more discrete conditions are met. Depending on conditions that are met, a state can potentially transition to one of many subsequent states.
States allow participants to track and identify the progress of the work. By seeing the work in the Submit state, the user and HR know that the request has yet to be reviewed by the manager. Based upon the decision that the manager makes in the Review state, the state can transition to one of two different states. If the manager manually denies the request or if ten days of inaction occur, one of the required conditions has been met to make the state transition to the Deny state. When the state transitions to Deny, the actions required are different than if the state had transitioned to Approve.
Workflows, which are based upon business processes, are comprised of tasks that are completed by workflow participants. Tasks are associated with states that identify the status of the work. States transition based upon conditions that are defined in the workflow.