Business Process Flows

Business process flows guide users through a prepackaged set of application tasks. Business process flows comprise steps that must be completed sequentially, and steps can have substeps. Substeps do not need to be completed sequentially and may not be required at every iteration of the process flow. Depending on a user's role in the organization, steps the person performs can involve completing actions, such as data entry, or reviewing an already completed step.

Note Note

A business process flow can only be defined for end-user tasks, and not for administrative tasks.

End of the note.

Features

You can use these business process flow features:

Personal To Do List

The To Do List displays required steps and optional substeps assigned to you, or completed steps that you must review, based on region. Therefore, they are called step regions. The To Do List displays the name and current status of each step region for which you are responsible.

Steps can have the following statuses:

Status	Description
Action Required	Waiting for completion as a new step.
Review Required	Action has been taken and the step is waiting for review.
Completed	The step has passed completion criteria.
Rejected	The step has failed to pass completion criteria.
Waiting for Proper Work Status	The step is waiting for its work status to be updated.
Pending	The step is waiting for a reopened step to be completed.
Reopen	The step is waiting for completion as a reopened step.
Waiting for Reopen	The step is waiting to be reopened by a reviewer. If it is a Review Required step, a user cannot reopen the step – it can only be reopened by a reviewer. When a user requests a reviewer to reopen a step, it has the status of Waiting for Reopen.
Unavailable	The step is not available; no action can be undertaken.

Owners and Reviewers

The owner of a step is the person responsible for completing the step. A reviewer is a person who must verify the activity taken for a step. Owners and reviewers can be an individual user or a team of users. Two or more users can select the same step region concurrently, as multiple users may be involved in the completion of a step region.

Reopen and Reset

Authorized users can reopen a previously completed step, and reset a specific instance or a set of business process flow instances. (Administrators can reset a set or all instances.)

For a step to be reopened, it must have the following criteria:

The step has the attribute Allow Re-Open defined in the Administration console.
The status of the step is Completed.
Only one previous step can be reopened at a time, but the steps can be reopened one by one in sequence.
The Reopen function is available only for the step prior to the current one. Therefore, the last step of a process cannot be reopened after that step is completed.
Users cannot reopen a step directly if the step has the attribute Enable Reviewers set. They can, however, send an e-mail request to a reviewer using an action pane link.
A user has the ReopenBPFStep task security assignment. A designated reviewer does not need to have the ReopenBPFStep task security to reopen a step.

A user can only reset a currently open business process flow region by choosing Reset this Instance on the action pane.

Step Completion

When completing a step or substep, the action pane displays context-sensitive options to assist you with completing tasks.

Completion of steps is audited by the system and appears in audit reporting.

When a step is completed, all reviewers nominated for the step receive an e-mail if Send e-mail to reviewers on completion is set.

Locked Dimension Precedence

A business process flow current view takes precedence over any dimension locks in the opened worksheet, but any locked dimensions not specified in the business process flow current view remain locked in the opened worksheet.

Example Example

The business process flow region uses Entity, Category, and Time, and the Entity and Category dimensions are locked in the workbook. The Entity and Category members are taken from the business process flow, and the Time member is taken from the worksheet.

End of the example.

For more information, see Defining Actions and Dimension Locks.

Reports

You can create reports on business process flows. See Reporting on Business Process Flows.

Activities

You access your Personal To Do List and business process flow reports using the links in the action pane that displays when you enter the Web interface. You perform the following business process flow activities:

Click a step in the Personal To Do List to launch the appropriate Planning and Consolidation function. This allows you to complete the step or launches the next substep.
To indicate you have completed a step, click Completed in the To Do List. This modifies the status of the step.
To refresh your To Do List, click Refresh. This allows you to see the activity of other users who share ownership of a step.
To reset a currently open business process flow instance, click Reset this BPF instance in the action pane of the To Do List.

To reset a currently open instance, you must have the Reset task profile.
To reopen a previously completed step, click Reopen this step in the action pane of the To Do List.

To reopen a previously completed step, you must have the Reopen step task profile, the step must previously have been set by an administrator as Allow Reopen, and the status of the step must be Completed. If the step has a status of Review enabled, only the reviewer can open it.