Visual Workflow Automation allows you to visualize and automate processes in your organization. You can create as many workflows as you wish representing the richness and complexity of your organization. You can automate decisions such as approvals. You can automate data manipulation based on If/Then conditions, timers and approvals. You can automate communication to key stakeholders with email notifications.

You can choose from a variety of activities:

• Generate Manual Tasks are assigned automatically to people or groups.
• Approvals with different resulting behaviors based on the decision.
• If/Then Conditions forking the workflow sequence to different branches.
• Timers waiting for an absolute time or for a relative amount of time.
• Wait-For conditions which hold the workflow until a condition has been met.
• Email notifications to notify stakeholders of the progress or request an action.
• Scripts that are executed like mini-programs during the workflow execution.
• Generating new issues from the same template or another template automatically.

Upgrading Existing ESM Installation with Visual Workflow Automation

It is possible to upgrade existing deployments with Visual Workflow Engine. In order to enable Visual Workflow Automation (VWA), the following pre-requisites have to be met:

• VWA product license are installed.
• VWA must be enabled in System Settings->Platform settings->Workflow settings.
  
• Approver attribute reference in Approval template must be set to Person template.
• Approvals folder must be created and linked with Approvals template.
• Approver role must be created with product permission for Organization module (see chapter related to Approvals below) and given Read and Update permission to Approvals folder and Approvals template.
• Approval template Elevated User Permission must be set for Approver role.
• Create Workflow Tasks folder and link to Workflows task template (Remember to give folder a code!).
  • Note that Workflow Task is a system template. 
• Add Read and Update permissions for Workflow task folder and templates for roles required to work on the tasks.
• Add platform parameter in Workflow settings of workflow.approval.applicationUrl to URL pointing to ESM such as https://baselineen.efectecloud-demo.com/itsm/ (if updated after creation of a workflow then the browser must be reloaded).
• Verify and if necessary configure platform parameters for ESS connection including.
  • ess.url (such as https://mycompany.efectecloud-dev.com/api/ssc/).
  • ess.token (as defined in ESM admin guide).
  • ess.connection.parameters (such as ?connectTimeout=200,allowAllHostnamesInCertificate=true,acceptSelfSignedCertificates=true).

Workflow Creation

You can create a workflow in the Templates section of the administration user interface. In the Template pane you can select from the Workflow button whether you want to create a new workflow or import an existing workflow from a file.

Visual workflows are a licensable feature of ESM. If you don’t see the Workflow button in the Templates pane, then you don’t have a valid product license for Visual Workflow. Please contact your ESM provider if you want to acquire the Visual Workflow license.

Template navigation tree with classes, attributes, and workflows:

Workflows are always linked to templates. You must select first to which template a workflow shall be linked to before you can create a new workflow. The new workflow will be shown in the template navigation tree below the classes belonging to the template.

ESM will automatically suggest a name for the new workflow based on the template name. You can edit the name at any time in the title bar of the workflow editor.

Workflows, Listeners and Handlers

Workflow actions behave like the last pre-save listener. The listener gets invoked automatically after each workflow node has been executed.

When workflow actions make changes to attributes on a data card, the execution of handlers might be triggered.

When visual workflow automation is applied to existing configurations then handlers and listeners must be re-checked and if necessary updated.

Workflow Editor

The workflow editor consists of three main areas:

• Template navigation pane on the left.
• Workflow sequence canvas.
• Workflow configuration area of the right.

The template navigation pane and the workflow configuration area can be minimized to increase the canvas size while designing visual workflows.

Workflow Run Conditions Configuration

Before you design the sequence of any workflow it is good to define under which conditions a workflow shall be run.

There can be - and probably should be - multiple workflows for various enterprise processes. You might, for example, have a routine service request workflow, a VIP service request workflow, and a low-value service request workflow.

The selection criteria can be for example the following conditions for a service request:

• Service request channel = Efecte Self-Service AND
• Service request status = Not Started AND
• Service offering = workstations

Selection Criteria in Workflow Configuration area:

ESM checks for any new issues handled with a template whether the workflow selection criteria is met, selects a workflow accordingly, and starts processing the workflow according to the designed process.

You must choose at least one selection criteria for a workflow shall be executed before you can publish the workflow.

A single condition is enough to trigger the workflow, but it is possible to build complex criteria with multiple conditions using a combination of various AND and OR relationships. How to build complex conditions is described in more detail in the Search Functionalities chapter under Multiple Conditions.

If it is necessary to create complex selection criteria for example to trigger different workflows for different service offerings on the service request template, then explicit conditions must be created for all possible outcomes. Example: “Status equals Not Started” AND “Service offering equals Smartphones” for handling smartphone service requests in addition to “Status equals Not Started” AND “Service offering does not equal Smartphones” for all other service requests.

Bulk Processing of Existing Issues

The Visual Workflow engine processes by default only newly created issues. However, it might be necessary occasionally to process also existing issues. 
A typical case when it is useful to execute existing issues is when a workflow is being checked out because it contains some outdated configuration and new issues shall not be processed anymore before the workflow design update. During the maintenance time new issues might have been recorded which shall be processed with the updated workflow once it is published again.

Configuring run criteria for existing issues:

In order to process already saved, never processed issues, it is possible to define a condition under which the workflow is activated once it is published. The processing of the issues happens asynchronous to the publishing event. Only issues that meet the configured condition and have not been processed previously by the workflow are being processed with this feature.

Limiting the Number of Active Workflow Processes

It might be necessary for performance reasons to limit the maximum amount of issues processed in parallel per workflow. The limitation can be set per workflow and is applied for each published version of the workflow.

Termination Condition Configuration

A workflow is designed that it typically runs from beginning to the end. However, a workflow might have to be manually terminated for example when the issue is not relevant anymore. The termination configuration defines the condition under which a workflow is terminated.

Termination condition configuration:

Whenever the defined status is set either manually or by the workflow, the entire workflow is terminated and all open activities are terminated.

Workflow Sequence Design

Designing the workflow sequence is the most important part of process automation. The order of when things happen and the conditions deciding if and what happens are crucial to optimize your services.

Every workflow sequence has one Start element. Every workflow sequence has at least one End element. The activities between Start and End elements are the visual representation of a process.

Once you have created a new workflow, you will be presented with a minimalistic default workflow on the workflow editor canvas. The default workflow has a Start element and an End element. On the left hand side of the workflow editor canvas is the palette. You will find all available visual elements to design a workflow on the palette. You add a new element to your workflow by clicking on an element in the palette and dragging it to the desired place on the workflow editor canvas.

Workflow Editor Canvas with initial workflow:

You delete a workflow node by first selecting it and then clicking on the X to delete it. You cannot delete the Start element. You can remove temporarily an End element, but you will not be able to publish it without a valid End element.

The workflow editor canvas has an invisible grid in order to make designing easy and preserve the clarity of the workflow designs. Visual elements will snap to the grid automatically.

Grid of Workflow Editor Canvas:

There are two ways to connect visual elements with each other. Firstly, you can drag a visual element over the line with an arrow of another element, which will automatically insert the element into the sequence. You can also place the visual element on any place on the grid and connect it manually by clicking on the arrow and dragging it to the desired element. The workflow editor will automatically redraw the connecting line.

Designing Easy-to-Use Workflows

Ideally workflows are designed from top left to the bottom right. Designing workflows starting from the top left corner follows the natural design of visual elements. The assumed “normal” or “positive” flow of things is by design downwards. Branching away from the “normal” flow of things is always to the right. Thus, designing from top to bottom, from left to right is the way to create your workflow with maximum clarity and least overlapping transitions.

Workflow designed for maximum clarity:

Exporting Workflow Diagrams to PDF files

It is possible to export workflow sequence diagrams to PDF files for multiple purposes. You initiate the PDF file creation from the Workflow drop-down menu in the template navigation tree. You can select the paper orientation before the PDF is created. The entire workflow sequence will be scaled to a size that fits onto a single page.

PDF export selection options:

The PDF document will be downloaded onto your computer automatically or open in the browser depending on the browser you use.