Basic workflow concepts

Basic concepts:
Workflow: two or more people continuously complete a business in a serial or parallel manner for the purpose of mutual goal.
Definition of a workflow management system: it refers to the definition of a defined workflow, which generates and manages trigger requests and warnings and interacts with external systems. In fact, the core of the workflow management system is the workflow engine. To put it bluntly, the workflow engine is just a pieceProgram, Responsible for the circulation of some things.
Two or more people: a business handled by one person is not called a workflow. A workflow is available only when a task is "streaming" from one person to another.
Common goal: an individual must participate in a workflow for the same purpose.

Before the emergence of workflow automation, All workflows were implemented manually.
Example: Typically, steps in a task require participants to grade documents or forms. After grading and filling out the relevant content in the form, the file is manually uploaded to the executor. The Process participants must be trained on process routing. Otherwise, the files will be left in the folder and cannot be processed.
Disadvantages:
Highly dependent on paper;
High labor intensity;
The process is not strict and the task execution is not easy to implement;
Unable to monitor the process;
Process time and process cost cannot be measured.

Relationship between workflow solutions and traditional management software:
1. Traditional Management Software focuses on solving existing problems at the enterprise application layer (for example, improving the resource allocation rate of an enterprise or improving the productivity of a single employee ).
Excel can improve the efficiency of employees to draw tables, financial software can regulate the work of financial personnel and improve the efficiency of account query, CRM can standardize customer management, so that customer resources are in the hands of the company rather than being part business personnel control and improve customer response time, ERP solves the problem of how to configure enterprise resources so that enterprise human resources, financial resources and material resources can be configured to maximize according to business needs.
2. workflow focuses on how to shorten the idle time of the process, so as to improve the business processing capability of the enterprise and enable the enterprise to focus on value-added services that are truly meaningful to the Enterprise.
3. Traditional software cannot solve workflow problems. For example, ERP focuses on enterprise resource configuration, but it cannot solve the loss during resource transmission and reduce the cost of transmission (process; similarly, workflow cannot completely solve the problems that traditional management software can solve. For example, it is difficult to implement the production process control that the MRP system can solve through workflow.

A good workflow automation solution:
Ability to draw work flow charts, of course, it is better to design with a graphical interface;
Design workbooks for each step;
Can combine external applications as part of workflow automation;
Can be connected to workbooks and enterprise databases;
Work Flow chart that can design conditional Routing Based on complex business rules, preferably without programming;
Information can be transmitted according to the function, user name, or upper-and lower-level relationship;
Able to monitor workflow execution status;
Ability to adjust workflows;
Ability to simulate and test workflow behavior;
Workflow applications must support multiple users and have high reliability;
Workflow applications must support intranets or the Internet and cross-platform.

Workflow automation is aimed at the lag time.

Workflow System programming procedure summary:
Create a process definition;
Deployment process definition;
START process definition;
Obtain a process instance;
Execute the task;
End the task.

When you look at the workflow documentation, interface N is often used. The following describes the content of these interfaces (five in total:
1. Process Definitions
The key to this layer is process definition language. The current standard is xpdl.
The processing content of the Process Definition Language in the API:
Session processing (connection, disconnect from the session of the participating system)
Workflow definition operation (get the process definition name, provide the session handle for Object-level operations, read and write the first-level process definition object)
Define object operations in a workflow (create, obtain, and delete objects according to the workflow definition, and obtain, set, and delete object attributes)

2. workflow APIs
The processing content of the workflow client application interface (interface 2) in the API:
1 session processing (connection, disconnect from the session that participates in the System)
2. Define an operation in a workflow (obtain the name and attributes of the process definition)
3. Process Control Function (create, start, and mediate an independent process instance, suspend and restore an independent process instance, and change the status of the independent process instance or activity instance, assigns and queries the attributes of a process or activity)
4. Process status function (enable or disable a process or activity instance query, set an optional filter, and obtain the details of the filtered process or activity instance as needed, obtain detailed information about a specific process or activity)
5 worksheet/work item processing function (enable or disable a worksheet query, set an optional filter, and obtain the notification when the items in the worksheet are selected, re-assigned, and ended, assign or query the attributes of a work item)
6. Process Management Function (changes the operation status of process definitions and process instances, changes the status of all specific types of process and activity instances, and assigns properties to all specific types of process and activity instances, end all process instances)
7. Data Processing (obtaining/returning workflow-related data or application data)

3. Processing content of the API related to the API called by the application:
Session processing (connection, disconnect from the session of the participating system)
Activity management function ([workflow engine --> application] starts activity, suspends, recovers, and exits activity [Application --> workflow engine] activity end notification, signal event, and query activity attributes)
Data processing function (provides related data for workflows and application data or data addresses)

4. Inter-engine Workflow
This layer describes the interaction between multiple workflow engines, and the interaction between engines is transparent to users.

5. audit and monitoring (interface 5)
The support of this specification in workflow products allows analysis of consistent audit data processing SS heterogeneous workflow products. during the initialization and execution of a process instance, multiple events occur which are of interest to a business, including WAPI events, internal workflow management engine operations and other system and application functions.