Business Optix Library Service – Workflow

Library Service – Workflow  The Business Optix Library Service provides both standard and customer- configurable workflows  As standard, the service offers an Approval workflow, which takes a modified model version through Review and Approval cycles before ‘publishing’ it to the Stakeholders folder for general distribution  Because the Approval workflow is a Business Optix model, customers can tailor it using WorkPad to suit their specific requirements  Customers can also create their own workflows, and have them triggered either o By user request (when saving a model to the library), or o Automatically, whenever a file is moved into a specified folder

Starting the Approval workflow To send a model to the standard Approval workflow, you need only:  Specify the Author and Owner, and their addresses, in the model’s Document Control page  Similarly specify the Reviewers and Approvers, in the Stakeholders area of the Model Explorer Select the stakeholder Type (Reviewers, then Approvers) 2. Click the [+] button to start adding a user 3. Enter the user’s name and address 4. Click OK to add the user to the list  While working online, select Save As from the application menu  Select Approval from the Send to Workflow dropdown, and click OK

Completing the Approval workflow Once started, the Approval workflow will:  Generate HTML for review and approval  Send an to the owner, author and reviewers with a link to the HTML  Allow the reviewers to add comments to the HTML  After a preset Review period, move on to the Approval stage (and the owner, author and approvers)  Unless the workflow is cancelled, after a further period it will ‘publish’ the model and all its documentation to the Stakeholders folder  At any stage, the author can review the comments just by opening the original model

Cancelling an Approval workflow To cancel the workflow at any time:  Open the Approval folder in the library’s Workflow folder  Open the sub-folder whose name is the current workflow step  Delete the workflow.url file

Customizing the Approval workflow It is easy to customize the Approval workflow using WorkPad:  Open the Approval model in the library’s Workflow folder  Add, remove or edit steps in the diagram  Save the workflow For each workflow step, you can specify:  The name, next step, timeout (in days), whether to create a copy (as opposed to a shortcut) of the original model, and whether to clean up on completion  Who to , and the content, when the step is started  What documentation to produce  Any server-side script to be run

Creating new workflows You can create new workflows too:  Create a New Model and select Workflow  Add and set the properties of each required step  As well as the workflow steps used in Approval, you can use the (default) Folder type...  This adds a Location property: click the link symbol, then select any folder in the library... ...to have the workflow started automatically whenever a new model (or version of a model) is saved to that folder  Check the Check subfolders? box to include all subfolders of your selected location – if left unchecked, only the folder itself will be monitored