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Function documentationDefining Steps and Sub-Steps Locate this document in the navigation structure

 

Steps are the general business actions you take when completing a process. Each business process flow must contain at least one step. You can create substeps to define one or more actions under a single step.

Guidelines for Defining Steps and Sub-Steps

The following are guidelines for defining steps and substeps:

  • Steps can have substeps, however substeps are not required.

  • Steps have criteria defined to control the region of data and the opening/closing criteria if required.

  • If a step has no substeps, you must associate at least one action with the step.

  • If a step has one or more substeps, you must associate at least one action with the substeps, not with the step itself.

  • All steps and substeps can have more than one action associated; the primary action is the launch action, additional actions appear in the action pane.

  • Steps may require approval (completion criteria) by a reviewer before the system considers the BPF step complete. Substeps are not subject to approval criteria.

  • Users do not need to perform substeps in sequential order, nor are all substeps required to complete the step.

  • An opening criterion may be applied to a sequential step that is required before the user can progress in the process.

  • Each step is assigned a driver dimension, which determines the generation (iteration) of the step by region of data.

  • The driver dimension assigned to the step also defines the owner and reviewer for the data region. The owner and reviewers can be modified after the generation of the BPF instance.

  • The BPF instance owner can finalize the BPF only when all steps are completed.

  • Up to one thousand steps per BPF template/instance can be defined.

Features

You can add a step or substep by providing the name of the step, an instruction, which appears in the action pane to tell users what to do, and setting the following properties:

Item

Description

Allow Re-Open

Select this option to allow users, who have the appropriate permissions, to reopen closed or completed steps.

Enable completion criteria

Completion criteria may be enabled if work status has been enabled in the controlling application of the BPF.

If defined, the selected combinations of members must be set to the specified work status before the step can be considered complete (see Work Status Setup).

Enable reviewers

To define an action that a reviewer must perform when reviewing the step, choose Set/Modify Custom Review Actions (see Defining Actions).

Reviewers are defined in the Reviewer property of the drive dimension.

Send e-mail to reviewers on completion

To define the contents of the e-mail that the reviewers receive upon completion, choose Define e-mail message. Enter data as required.

Activities

To define a step, from Define Steps/Sub-Steps, click Add, and choose Add a new process step. Define the properties for each step as desired. Reorder the steps, add substeps, and define actions for each step.

To define a substep, from Define Steps/Sub-Steps, choose an existing step, click Add then choose Add a new substep. Define the properties for each substep as desired. Reorder the substeps, and define actions for each substep.