All About Workflows on the Windows platform ..musings by Jey@K2

noreply@blogger.com (jey) — Thu, 24 May 2007 14:42:00 +0000

My blog is moved... to ... http://srikantha.wordpress.com

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Task Delegation

noreply@blogger.com (jey) — Tue, 22 May 2007 05:51:00 +0000

K2 provides delegation features out of the box. Every manager in the directory has access to their subordinates' tasks. As a user you can redirect your worklist items to anyone in the directory as well.

there is also a nice out of office component that allows users to setup out of office scenarios as well.

When you want a group of users to have exclusive access to business process tasks so that they can manage them, you either make this group of users as a destination in those tasks of interest and leverage the K2's out of the box task management features OR will need to use K2 APIs to implement this functionality.

K2MNG is the management API that can be used by anyone who has K2 Admin permissions. this API allows you to implement custom interfaces that can provide functionality (or a sub set) that is found in the K2 service manager tool.

let's look at the code required to set this up.

1. you connect to K2 via the management API as a k2 admin (only K2 admins can use this API) -> K2Manager.login(...)

2. you get the worklist items for process instances you are interested in. This will bring in any currently running processes'
worklistitems from the criteria you have passed in. look at the help for detailed info on this method and other parameters. there is also a sample in the K2 help file. -> K2Manager.Getworklistitems(...)

3. you then redirect any interested worklistitems to anyone required.

5. you disconnect -> K2Manager.logout()

Try

Dim kmgr As New SourceCode.K2Mng.K2Manager

'I must be a K2 Admin

kmgr.Login("localhost", 5252)

Dim wl As SourceCode.K2Mng.WorkListItems = kmgr.GetWorkListItems( Nothing,
"project\processname")

'redirect this wlitem to admin

'you need to find and select which one/ones you want to redirect

kmgr.RedirectWorklistItem(wl.Item(0).ID, "Administrator")

kmgr.Logout() 'remember to logout

Catch excep As Exception 'catch any exception

' Exception Occurred :)

End Try

Dynamic Escalations

noreply@blogger.com (jey) — Fri, 18 May 2007 07:18:00 +0000

I came across a query on how to make escalation configurations to be dynamic in K2.

The user wanted escalations to be reset when a process datafield is changed. He wanted to do this in a client event so that the user interface will have update and submit buttons and as the user make changes to the fields and update the form, the relevant escalations should be reset accordingly. If the user does not do this within the escalation period ofcourse the escalation should fire. If the user makes the update, escalation resets and now we expect the next update to happen and the next update and eventually user will submit and complete the event. then the process moves to the next activity.

Interesting functionality! however doing this in K2 is not straightforward.

K2's escalations are bound to an activity at the time of the creation of the activity instance. so the escalation timer value cannot be altered afterwards - during runtime.

This means that the way to reset an escalation configuration, is to expire the activity and reinstate that.

Okay but how do we achieve what the user wanted?

If you create an activity with a single client event and configure the escalation in that activity, then you can create another activity with a server event, immediately following the previous escalation activity, we can write code in a server event that can look at what needs to happen based on the updates made in the previous client event, and setup some datafields with appropriate escalation timer values. We then loop back into the escalation activity (when required) and use these datafields to reconfigure the escalation.

the process map will look something like this:

You will also need to create some process data fields - make them hidden and not audited.

In the user interface that corresponds to the client event, we can put in some code that will redirect the page to the user's next worklistitem from the same process instance and they will see the same page now with the updated values but belonging to another client event.

the code for this will look like this:

con.Open("k2server");

WorklistCriteria crit = new WorklistCriteria();

crit.AddFilterField(WCField.ProcessFolio, WCCompare.Equal, “folio_of_my_process_instance”);

crit.AddFilterField(WCField.ProcessFullName, WCCompare.Equal, “project\\processname”);

crit.AddFilterField(WCField.ActivityName, WCCompare.Equal, “activity_name”);

crit.AddFilterField(WCField.EventName, WCCompare.Equal, “event_name”);

Worklist wl = con.OpenWorklist(crit);

if (wl.Count > 0)

{
url = wl[0].Data;
}

Con.close();

Page.Redirect(url);

of course the server event in the activity that follows the escalation activity will have to work out the relevant logic to set the correct escalation timers and line rules. but, we have done it :)

The Essence of Escalations

noreply@blogger.com (jey) — Mon, 14 May 2007 02:22:00 +0000

what a lovely morning ...you are busily working through your tasklist. before that 10 am meeting you need to finish these last 3 items... and you hit a snag!

You need help. You need it now. Usually it is not that easy...

But, you can get help and get it formally if you have had escalations in place.

Escalation is a management tool. it helps the managers to help employees get things done.
Escalation support also helps to avoid things that could slip through the cracks.

Escalation mechanisms are handy when you are dealing with business processes.

Business processes typically have a lot of activities and tasks. Many different groups of people will be involved in executing tasks and there could be delegations, re-assignments, re-prioritising, suspension and cancellations of tasks. All these actions could affect future activities in the same or connected business process instances.

So it is very important to have escalations in place in your business processes so that if u hit a snag you are covered for it. if u forget something, someone will remind you, repeatedly.

It is your insurance policy that proactivley works to reduce process accidents :)

By defining ecalations at various levels of your business process, (activity, task, group and user) you can have fine grained support and control.

K2.NET 2003 shipped activity level escalations out-of-the-box. Blackpearl comes with event/task level escalations. Blackpearl implements the escalation mechanisms for you on top of the WF framework. Your WF artifacts can also be 'escalation enabled' if hosted inside a blackpearl event. Cool, huh?

more on Dynamic Business Applications (DBAs)

noreply@blogger.com (jey) — Fri, 11 May 2007 04:49:00 +0000

So Dynamic Business Applications (DBAs) are cool. But, how do we build them? What should we look for when designing them?How are they different to OO design?are they different?

Actually Objects are still at the core of apps. Any app. In DBAs we orchestrate objects, composite objects from other object systems. So that our app building process is rapid. since the plumbing is done for us we are doing less work and leveraging more from whats already there.

the focus is on the process - what do we do with these objects.

by declaratively assembling objects and configuring rules and policies these objects will abide by we are raidly working at the business domain. we dont have to get lost in translation back and forth between the tech and biz domains. thats the power of DBA platforms.

having the ability to visually design these composites is important. business user tooling to work with these applications is essential for a DBA platform. You could say the 4GLs are back with vengence. I think blackpearl is a better one. time will tell.

Dynamic Business Applications

noreply@blogger.com (jey) — Thu, 10 May 2007 04:50:00 +0000

Changes are so dynamic in this world, in our environment and in business. They say "Change is the only constant". I say "Change is a dynamic constant".

We the human race, race to control this change to our convenience constantly. that is our heritage. building business applications in this tradition is a natural transiton that has been the trend in IT with different degrees of success.

Looking at bits of data as information and mining it to extract powerful knowledge has been the domain of specialised apps. now that power is coming to the hands of every information worker. the specialised tools are becoming platforms on top of which familiar interfaces are building feature sets to enable managers and receptionists to impact and control change in the business.
it is impressive.

K2's upcoming release 'blackpearl' is aimed at making business applications more dynamic. process centric approach makes sense in the business world. you dont spit bits that go into a blackhole. they are transactions certainly costing you something so you need to know about it and you need to leverage it. why send an email to discuss a meeting plan? use calendar or the meeting workspace. use search. leverage the integration into document management. look at the flow of process and anticipate. learn from automatic documentation. do bulk actions. collaborate and get notified through the appropriate channels....and best of all control all these and adjust them dynamically. build more dynamic apps easily.

The power of simplicity

noreply@blogger.com (jey) — Mon, 07 May 2007 02:49:00 +0000

When we look at business process automation, in most cases, we are talking about electronic forms automation. That is the human side of BPA.

Most business applications have forms and reports (what more is there from a user perspective? :) If we can get users to build these applications (they know what forms/reports they want) and make it simple and a satisfying experience then we can get IT to focus on the harder aspects - like the architecture, plumbing, hosting, security, backup, system integration, etc, etc.

Recently I have come across two projects involving K2 and AchieveForms. Here's a link to an integration video made available on the net that illustrates the possibility of this kind of app building: http://video.businesswebsoftware.com/AF_K2.wmv

in this video they showcase how you might get a business user to design and implement a forms based business process that involves approvals, etc without coding and IT involvement.

Buy or Build

noreply@blogger.com (jey) — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 13:28:00 +0000

The "Buy vs Build" argument is an age old one. It is still a very important one that we encounter in our lives many many times. some times the decision is easy, simple and very clear. at other times it is not. when you can make the decision and see the pros and cons clearly it is just natural. such as do you make a sandwich or buy one from the cafe :) we get it toasted right? :)

we used to build everything. because we dont usually know what we will be needing tomorrow. when the need arises we fulfill it by building it. later we started seeing repeating patterns, efficencies and issues with building things when we needed and so on.. we created a system of work and labour and products and cash that based on the principles of specialisation, supply and demand.

In IT where the concepts of technology is about automation, meaning re-use and customisation are king, we still find this situation of products being built by many people in different ways to suit their different sometimes not so different needs.

with the help of live.com :) we should be able to find whatever we need being available as a product in some way form or shape some where... live is good..it will find it :) however, the 80% match on the feature set is important and so is the price. usually the price should be cheaper. learning it and implementing it to fit the rest of 20% and evolving it are the key challenges.

not every product is implemented to make these challenges go away. some products are not so critical to you. they are axillary tools, like a spell check add-in for IE. some are very very important - like your OS, Database, or a BPM platform.

these products usually have these angles well covered. some products are much much better than others in being true platforms.

I guess you will always buy and build (customise) as 100% feature set fit will never happen :)

Composability is a paradigm shift - Chris Keyser on The Architecture Journal

noreply@blogger.com (jey) — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 02:20:00 +0000

Chris Keyser the lead architect for Microsoft's Global ISV team wrote an article on the MSDN architecture Journal 10 on composite applications. the full article is here: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/arcjournal/bb266335.aspx

He wrote business process application assembly capability will be demanded by end users. And this will have to be delivered. We will see vendors bringing these features in the products.

I am a fan of application orchestration. As a lazy coder I like to work smart and not too hard so assembling apps like a chair or a table is just beyond cool... it is very productive. as long as the parts fit well or you have a saw to shave off the edges :) If this is going to be a end user task then imagine the kind of automation we can get at the enterprise level with business processes.

Now, one thing is to have the ability to spring off websites in seconds....and then being able to manage it ... but isn't the google way is not to organise but to searh? :) so..what we learnt from WSS 2.0 and SPS 3.0 we should leverage that ...and whatever the offering vendors have they better bring the management tooling with this platform as well.

TechEd 2006 Australia

noreply@blogger.com (jey) — Tue, 03 Oct 2006 11:37:00 +0000

At TechEd 2006 I saw the increased focus on workflows... there were many sessions covering windows workflow. Sharepoint, Biztalk and the dedicate workflow foundation sessions, all covered the different aspects. All in all it has opened many opportunities for the workflow technology in windows environments. developers now have better support for building workflow into their applications and bulding workflow applications for sharepoint, biztalk and the rest of the microsoft stack.

K2.NET, Captaris and Skelta are all going to be releasing their next versions on WF. There are few more workflow vendors need to be watched as well in this space. Nintex smart library for sharepoint from OBS and UniqueWorld's sharepoint forms are all in bit of trouble as these entry level solutions are now in straight competition with Micorsoft's own versions namely, MOSS workflows and Forms Server.

K2.NET has already been working on WF for some time now. Captaris are saying they need to see how MS's final product going to be when it finally get released, but are releasing a version for WF. Skelta are supposedly working on a version embracing WF as well.

more basics

noreply@blogger.com (jey) — Mon, 24 Jul 2006 03:39:00 +0000

If we look at windows workflow foundations or WF as an example, the capabilty provided is mainly for developers. It is an API that will allow coders to leverage the unified workflow API for windows. There is some great tooling available from within VS.NET to support easy assembly of workflow maps. It has integration with debugging and distributed development capabilities and team systems features. It is still a developer toolkit though :)

So, for the masses to leverage this toolkit, we need tools like visio, word, excel and the browser itself to be able to support workflow creation, deployment, management, initiation, participation and reporting.

Sharepoint is doing a good job by providing the widely used workflow processes out-of-the-box. then we have sharepoint designer to help implementing higher level of functionality than these workflows. After that we have to resort to VS.NET or notepad using WF.

I guess there is a lot of room for ISVs and SIs to play here. Nintex has a sharepoint only toolkit for workflows. I have worked with Sharepoint integration components from vendors like K2, and Captaris. These vendors will upgrade and expand their offerings in this space - no doubt about that.

I also think there is a lot of room for small players to come up with solutions in this space. now that barrier to entry has been lowered by this unfied API. SaaS is the other are where Workflow can work for the small players in a big way.

the workflow wave

noreply@blogger.com (jey) — Thu, 20 Jul 2006 23:37:00 +0000

Microsoft will be embeding more and more WF based capabilities in to its product suite. We have seen the formal announcement for the BTS 2006 R2 where the Human workflow component in BTS will be implemented as WF. eventually, BTS2008 will fully incorporate WF.

Whether BAM will also evolve to support WF as a suite of product is unknown. MS does have most of the components of a Workflow platform in place. So, whether they combine and make it a platform offering or not is an interesting question. This will change the landscape for ISVs who currently bridge the gap in the workflow / BPM area.

Microsoft's scorecards and Performance point also has a part to play in the Business Process Management arena. Imagine one day all WF processes could be managed from a central place and integrated in to corporate reporting would be a great capability. This won't be for free and MS will need many years to deliver this.

the basics

noreply@blogger.com (jey) — Sat, 24 Jun 2006 16:20:00 +0000

back to basics they say. So, what is Workflow? flow of work? my take is, it is typically a graphical map of activities connected to specify the order of things that happens in a business process. It also specifies who does it and what happens and the rules that drive it. from my coding background I also see that as a depiction of algorithms or computer programs. But, the high value of application of the workflow concept comes from business process implementations.

It gives us automation, tracking, control, reporting and insight. This insight comes through the graphical nature of the process (self) documentation and from the tracking, monitoring, reporting and the possible mining of the data associated with these collected over a period of time.

Other key aspect here is integration. Typically we automate a manual process. The pre-requisite for automation is the thing exist in a manual form :) and this process be it human based or not, spans more than one business domain. hence the integration across those business domains is required and typically an assumed feature. Hence the tools that provide the workflow capability has some out-of-the-box support for integration.

Integration is also required for storage, security and reporting components.

windows workflow

noreply@blogger.com (jey) — Sat, 24 Jun 2006 15:17:00 +0000

So now that the windows workflow foundation (WF) has been branded under the .NET 3.0 umbrella we can kind of see the importance given to this technology. This means the workflow is here to stay as part of the framework and will continue to evolve. That's a good thing.

But, this would mean that the workflow improvements may have to wait for the the framework releases. It will be much slower. given the importance of this technology tying it to the framework means that one day we could even see language constructs to help workflow style processing. although I like the xaml approach it would be cool to have a WF# offering as well :)

anway, looking at the Office 2007 beta, we can see WF manifesting itself through sharepoint and the standard applications like word and excel. It is already there in the Team Edition of VS.NET 2005.

I dont know whether Vista will have some OS level tools built on WF. May be as a showcase. Reading through the 5 or so articles on the Microsoft Architecture Journal edition 7 themed "Generation Workflow" it is clear that MS has looked at many applications for the WF. Not just the Human workflow.

I am still waiting to see Biztalk's tac on WF. Should be interesting.

welcome to all (about workflows)

noreply@blogger.com (jey) — Sun, 19 Feb 2006 01:35:00 +0000

This blog is dedicated to the Workflow technology. I am starting to focus more and more of my time on it (for work and play). so I thought it is time to get serious about sharing my views online.

See how we go.