Presently, there are two major weaknesses of today’s workflow management tools—rework and attachment of ad hoc documents. Nearly all workflow management systems have problems with these two very real world requirements. The ES3 workflow management suite has solved these industry problems. ES3 systems enable any number of steps to be reworked at any point in the workflow process. ES3 systems enable the ad hoc attachment of new documents midstream at any point and by any user in the workflow process.
Any enterprise seeking an integrated workflow management solution should address these two issues very early in their evaluation of both products and system integrators. ES3 contends that nearly all business process either require these two functions or will soon need to include these two functions as users grow to expect their electronic workflow systems to enable and expand upon what was possible in the paper world. An enterprise should be careful not to select workflow management tools or workflow system integrators with inherent limitations—limitations that ensure early system obsolescence.
Most COTS workflow management products (including InConcert) only allow for task-level rework. To understand the difference between these two rework approaches consider the workflow figure shown below.
Suppose the workflow has progressed to the “remove vendor” task. Next, suppose the user responsible for the “remove vendor” task decides that the user who performed the “justify removal” task did something incorrectly. So the former user routes the workflow back to the “justify removal” task for rework. When the latter user receives the task they see their mistake and redo their work. The changes made now indicate that the workflow should progress through the decision point to the “alter vendor scope” task. A rewind-style rework approach will allow that decision to be reconsidered. In a task-level rework approach, after the “justify removal” task is completed the second time, the workflow is automatically routed back to the “remove vendor” task (the task at which the rework request was made) which, in this case, is inappropriate.
Naturally, we must ask the following question. If InConcert (and indeed most other COTS products) provides task-level rework, how can you implement rewind-style rework using those products as the core of the workflow system? As it turns out, rework is often implemented as an artifact of the system client. In fact, the InConcert server has no direct support for workflow whatsoever. Thus, the server being the TRUE core, ES3 uses its basic workflow mechanisms provided by the server to implement rework in the workflow client.
Most business enterprise require a “rewind” style of rework to properly enable and enforce the real requirements of business processes.
Most COTS workflow management products (including InConcert) make it impossible or at best cumbersome to attach documents along the various steps in the workflow. Yet, doing so is a very common need. ES3’s suite of workflow management tools enables easy scanning and viewing of the attachments as well as their attachment into the tasks and routings of the electronic workflow system. ES3 system integrators will customize these functions for the specifics of any particular workflow process. The following figure shows the generic user screen from which we begin customizing ad hoc document attachment into the workflow system of any enterprise. To attach a document to a task action, the user drags the document icon from this window to a task in the workflow management grid window. This document window can be customized to show not only documents that have yet to be attached to a workflow task, but also to display the entire set of documents that have been attached to any workflow task in the process instance thus far.
It is very important that the workflow management system be able to extract as much information as possible from the document itself and from the operating system to remove the onus from the user. ES3 systems give users the option of supplying meaningful names or notes about the document, but it is not required.
ES3 integrates all interfaces for ad hoc document attachment will be integrated with other workflow system user interfaces. These architectural details are transparent to the user.
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