Workflow Manager

1Reading the list #

• Progress is finished steps over all steps. It stops at 99% while anything is still open — a route is only 100% when nothing is waiting.
• Waiting at is the earliest step still open; Waiting on lists the people who have not answered it.
• Days waiting counts from the moment the open step opened - the number worth sorting by. It is empty when nothing is waiting: a document not yet submitted, or a route that has finished. A 0 means it opened today.
• A row in orange is past the step's due date (the step's expiry in days , set in Workflow Set-up).
• The list is scoped by your report option — all branches, your branch, or your group — exactly as reports are.
• Set the status and the dates , then press Apply filter — nothing is fetched while you are still choosing. The screen opens on Pending and Submitted — the documents somebody still has to act on. Pick Completed or Aborted as well to see finished routes, or press Clear for all four.
• The footer counts the documents listed, totals their value, and gives the longest wait among them — the filter decides what is counted.
• Drag the handle between the list and the route to give either one more room; the arrow keys move it too, and Home puts it back. Where you leave it is remembered on this browser. The route always keeps enough width to be read, however far the handle is pushed.

2The route, and what the colours mean #

• Green — completed or approved.
• Blue — started: it is open and waiting for people.
• Grey — pending: it has not opened yet, because the step before it has not finished.
• Red — rejected.
• Amber — cancelled or stopped by somebody on this screen.

Under each step are the people it was given to, in their own state, with their remarks on hover.

Diagram or Steps. The route is drawn by default: Start at the top, one box per step, End at the foot. An arrow is a step's starting rule — from Start, it opens on submit; from another step, it waits for that one (the step before it, or every parent its step name lists); a dashed arrow means it is started by hand. The box's edge is the colour above, and late (amber, glowing) is an open step past its due date. Click a box and that step's card — with every STEP and PEOPLE action — shows under the drawing. Drag the canvas to move around; zoom with the buttons, or Fit to see it whole. Steps shows every card as a list instead; the screen remembers which you chose.

A document that was rejected and sent round again has one pass per round : the diagram draws the latest, and a Round list appears to draw an earlier one. A step re-opened by a rejection says so in its box.

3What you can do, and what it does #

Everything sits on the thing it acts on — the document's verbs at the end of its row, the step's and its people's on the step itself. Nothing has to be selected first: pressing a button picks what it is on. The desktop hides the same list behind a right-click; here it is in the open, because a right-click has no keyboard and no touch screen. Hover any button for its name.

• At the end of a row — open and print the voucher; submit a route still Pending; abort one that is running; time analysis ; reports .
• On a step card, STEP — pause holds it where it is, complete settles it as if everybody had answered, cancel takes it out of the route (reason required). Start is for a PAUSED step only, and it asks everybody again : the engine opens a step by setting every assignment on it back to pending, so answers already given are erased. The dialog says how many before you press OK. Then: what it tells its approvers; its instruction document , which opens with the program that owns it (Word and Excel through their own scheme, anything the browser can show inline, everything else as a download); everything ever written against it; and compose mail — the desktop's Compose Message: a mail about the step, addressed to the people it still waits on, with the step's own subject and message filled in from the document. Pick the account it goes from, add people or files, and send; it is logged in Admin > Notification Log whether it went or not.
• On a step card, PEOPLE — add asks more people (they join as Manual, pending, beside the others). Approve , reject and escalate record a decision against that person , with your remarks. Cancel stops waiting for them. Back to pending undoes an answer given in error.
• Click a person's chip first to act on them by name; otherwise the dialog asks whose assignment it is, opening on the first one still to answer.

Every one of these goes through the workflow engine, exactly as an approval made on the voucher itself does — so the step settles, the next one opens and the document's status moves in the same way whoever did it. Two cautions worth knowing: Back to pending does not rewind a step the engine has already settled (Start the step first if it has to wait again), and an escalation never escalates onward .

4Cancelling a step or an assignment #

• Cancel step takes the whole step out of the route. The engine then settles the document as it would after any other decision — which may mean the next step opens, or the route ends.
• Cancel assignment takes ONE person out. The step stays; it is simply no longer waiting for them, and its policy is judged on the people who are left.
• A cancellation needs a reason , and it is written into the document's history beside everything else that happened to it.
• Neither is a delete. Nothing is removed — the step or the assignment is marked cancelled and stays readable.

5Health check - documents stuck part-way #

Health check on the toolbar looks at every document in a route and lists the ones that are stuck — in a state that no later answer will move on from. Most are documents that were already part-way through when the web and its workflow engine arrived; the desktop's own procedures could leave them behind. The check only reads.

• Each line says what is wrong and what to do , in red (the route cannot move), amber (it can, with a hand) or grey (information).
• Settle is offered only where the answers already given decide the matter — every step is done but the route was never marked complete, or a step's policy is met but the step is still open. The engine reads those answers again and does what it would have done then, and writes it into the document's history. It decides nothing a person has not already decided.
• Everything else needs you: Show lists every status, puts the document on the board with its step picked, and closes the check — then use the step's or the document's own buttons.
• Only documents you can see are named — the same report option and branch as the list. Findings elsewhere are counted, not named.
• F5 checks again. Settle is never on a key.

6Who may use this #

• Opening the screen needs User Can Run WorkflowManager — and the database enforces it inside the list itself, so an unpermitted user sees nothing here rather than a partial list.
• User can cancel Workflow Steps and User can cancel Workflow Assignments are separate rights: somebody can be allowed to watch without being allowed to intervene.
• All three sit in User Permissions under Preferences . Administrators hold them without a tick.

7If something does not work #