Start Workflow Action
With a Start Workflow action, you can integrate workflow processing into BRFplus. You can access each of the workflows that have been defined in the backend system, assign it to a Start Workflow action and let the system perform the predefined steps once the action is triggered by a BRFplus expression.
For a discussion of the differences between the Start Workflow action and the workflow event action, see Workflow Event Action.
Prerequisites
Your backend system contains software component SAP_BASIS with a release lower than 800. In SAP_BASIS 800 or higher, the underlying workflow functionality of this action type is not supported.
You have created a workflow definition with the Workflow Builder
(transaction SWDD) in the backend system.
Features
After having entered the desired workflow ID, click Update Workflow Container
. The system analyzes all the data dictionary elements that are used in the workflow definition. For each of these data dictionary elements, the system automatically creates a BRFplus
data object in the current application and defines a binding relationship to the corresponding element.
You can provide input data to all of the workflow container elements. Depending on the element, you can either directly enter a value or insert a reference to a context data element or an expression that is evaluated dynamically at runtime.
In case of complex container elements (structure or table), you can provide the data for such elements by assigning a decision table expression as input source for such elements. Each of the structure or table fields would have to be covered by a corresponding result data object of the decision table. With the help of additional context data objects for the decision table, you can control which of the predefined results shall be used for populating the workflow container.
You can define that the workflow shall not start immediately after the Start Workflow action has been triggered. Rather, you can define an execution delay of up to 9999 days, 23 hours, 59 minutes, and 59 seconds.
Note
When you check or activate a Start Workflow action, the system does not only check whether the BRFplus-specific settings are correct. Moreover, it also detects any inconsistent or incomplete settings that must be corrected in the definition of the underlying workflow definition, for example, a missing assignment of workflow agents.
Example
You are running an application designed for managing insurance contracts for household belongings. While the major factor for calculating the insurance rate is the value of the household belongings, your application contains a value-dependent discriminator that ensures that contract values exceeding a certain threshold cannot be entered in the system directly. Rather, with an initial case expression, the system separates the allowed values from the exceeding ones. While the allowed values are immediately passed over to a decision table used for the value/rate assignment, the contract values exceeding the threshold are sorted into a processing branch where a Start Workflow action is triggered. This workflow is defined such that additional approval steps have to be performed first before the contract can be further processed. With this scenario, you can make sure that the appropriate risk mitigation steps are taken to protect your company from having to pay amounts insured that are not covered by your company's overall risk calculation.