This section shows how to use Workflow to process inbound IDocs, rather than using the direct input via function call.

We recommend using direct input via function call rather than Workflow for inbound processing because of the performance overhead of invoking Workflow for each inbound IDoc or IDoc packet.

Using Workflow makes sense when each IDoc of a given message type and/or from a given sender needs to be manually processed, or the subsequently created application object needs to be manually processed, but only when created from an IDoc. An example is with the message type ORDCHG, "sales order change"; whereby a company might decide that sales order changes from some customers (senders) need to be reviewed by a person before they are posted.

The two subsections deal with the two different ways of processing inbound IDocs with workflow: Work items and Workflow.