Workflow Sample: Episode 480: Significance in Arranging "10 Minutes Pause" after Auto-step

It is no longer an uncommon that letting a Workflow system processing, such as;

"Auto-calculation" for consumption tax",
"Auto-generation" of invoice PDF,

as the sophistication of information system progresses.

You can reduce mistakes and reworkings greatly by automation of intermediate steps. And also it leads to a shortening the required time for the entire process.

However, on the other hand, excessive automation will result incomprehensible of the mechanism, and become incapable of corresponding upon occurrence of troubles.

All the more reason, when it includes auto-steps which error occurrence rate is not negligible, such as

"Auto data retrieving" using communication network
"Auto data storage" using communication network
"Script Step" with lots of if statement
"Script Step" including decimal calculation

(Actually, it might be a great agenda in "era of utilizing Cloud.)

[Invoice Issuance-Sampling check]

In this sample Workflow, "Proration calculation" and "Generation of Invoice PDF" have been automated. Although it is almost the same as the Workflow I introduced in the last article, I would like you to pay attention to "Sampling Check" step which has been added newly. (Also, send back flow has been added as well.)

As it is obvious if you look at the Business Flow Diagram, this Step of "Sampling Check"is devised to automatically flow to the next step if it was allowed to stand for 10 minutes after arrival. It allows you to check selectively, whether invoice PDF has been generated properly, for example,

if the company name of the customer is very long
if the name of the representative includes special characters.

By the way, the Idea of sampling inspection is a concept close to the operating procedures of "Quality control" (ISO 9001) or "Internal audit". It would be good to achieve in "a mechanism to advance automatically to the next step at the deadline time" for a processing step which is not necessarily to be done, as this example. (*In technical terms (BPMN terminology), it referred to as a "Timer Boundary Event".)

[Invoice Issuance-Sampling check:"2. Sampling check" screen]