Business workflow platform design (I)

Recently, I am busy designing an Application Integration System, so I haven't written workflow-relatedArticle. However, during this period, we never gave up onWF. We have made substantial progress in the application of workflows. For commercial purposes, it cannot be published hereSource code. However, for the purpose of mutual improvement, I still need to explain some technical key points. I have done a lot of research with my colleagues during this period, and I would like to express my gratitude to them.

let's get started quickly. The significance of introducing a workflow is clear to everyone: separating the ever-changing process to reduce development costs, maintenance costs, or other things. So what kind of effect can be achieved? For those of us who are using it for the first time, there are more good expectations, for WF applications are indeed not easy to do. A series of articles in this article only explores some technical points. Now we can integrate it.

Here we will discuss one of our actual needs. The manuscript review process on the radio station and TV station is very serious. Each station has its own review process, even if a separate unit may have different review procedures depending on the importance, urgency, and content of the manuscript. Example:

L Regular review process: first-level auditing from bottom to top. For example, Edit review À Team lead Review À Classified Review À Head office review.

L final audit: an extension of the regular audit process. That is, each link has the final audit right. This operation can be performed as long as it is deemed that there is no need for the superior (the leader) to review the process.

L Cross-Review: This situation exists, A process may fail to run due to some reason (the related personnel may have asked for leave. There are two solutions: one is to automatically jump the activity to the next processing link after waiting for a certain period of time through the delayed activity. The disadvantage of this method is that you must wait; another operation is that the personnel involved in the next link can directly review the content of the manuscript involved in the previous link, this audit method is a more timely operation method.

the following voting method may apply to the review of each link:

L weight requirements: each user involved in the Link has a weight value. When the sum of the values reaches a certain expectation, this step is passed. Or if the sum of the opposing weights reaches a certain value, it is deemed that it has not passed the review.

L role requirements. For example, three of the five editors are required to go to the next stage if they agree. If two of them disagree, they are called back. Another example: if two sub-stations or one of them accepts the request, the request passes. If one or more sub-stations reject the request, the request is rejected.

LPersonnel requirements. This is relatively simple. You only need to specify the list of people you can participate in, the number of people who pass or reject.

How to effectively allow customers to flexibly design and use these processes anytime and anywhere without the intervention of engineering or after-sales personnel is a very difficult problem. The customer is concerned about several steps in the process. If you want to use Ifelse Or While When designing the details of each link, the customer will soon reject the system. Even skilled engineers will frown, And the maintenance cost will rise sharply, in addition, developers also need to perform complex and additional work for each condition in the workflow designer.

This is the ideal situation. The workflow designer is very simple: they can insert an activity from the toolbox to the workflow editing interface. Each activity represents a complete process, this is not part of the process; this is the key to simplifying user design. Users don't have to worry about designing the logic of a specific link. All they do is set the attributes of business-related activities. The designed workflow looks very intuitive and concise.

To give users such a user experience, we need to do a lot of work. The main content is as follows.

LWorkflow Editor

L Custom audit activities

L workflow-based workpiece maintenance framework

L WorkFlow Design Management Framework

LDistributed deployment requirements

However, to combine these components to apply them in different application systems, this is the concept of a business workflow platform. To be continued.