Workflow Sample: Episode 566: Reserving Revision of Membership Information due to Personnel Change

Operation: User's affiliation Information

"Management Department", "Sales Department", "Development Department"...

A Task of "corresponding to request for estimate" that is triggered by inquiry via website, for example. Although it is offered automatically to "someone in the Sales Department", as a matter of course, "users not belonging to the Sales Department" can not undertake permanently.

Again, in the operation of the workflow system, it is extremely important that information of members belonging to "Organization" are maintained in the latest state. If such basic information were not properly maintained, the Process owner's day-to-day business process improvement would be in vain.

Of course, it is also possible to define a Business Process such as "inputting that Supervisor: Jefferson" each time making request. But, it is inefficient. (Even it would likely end up to help violation of rules or fraud to become frequent...)

*Samples of Organizational Tree

Challenge: Group not in Organization tree

Concerning "affiliation information" of members, reservation for addition and deletion has been automatized using API. (Reference: Episode 565: General IT Control Achieved by Automatizing）.

However, how should I handle clusters of Users, such as "people qualified for Information security" or "Employee in training" or even "tennis circle"? I hesitate to call these as Organizations. First of all, hierarchy, I do not know where to put it in the tree structure of the organization... Certainly, a "tennis circle" is not in charge of official company work, so there is no obligation to maintain it. But you might want to take advantage of User groups such as "qualifier of information security" or "employees in training " for designing "allocation rule"...

[Account Issuance-ML Registration-Reservation]

Solution: Management on Role

In order to automatize the "transfer of business data" by the Workflow system, it is necessary to clearly define "what kind of person undertakes it" for respective Business Process. In most cases, it is defined by group information referred to as "Organization" such as "a person belonging to an organization called Sales Department" or "a person belonging to an accounting section of the Management Department". (All the employees must belong to one or more "Organization".)

However, if there are user attributes such as "qualifier of information security" and "employees in training" has been defined, it will be possible to define more detailed allocating rules.

Employees who belong to Development Department and in training
Employees who belong to Sales Department and holding information security qualification

In the cloud based Workflow, "Questetra BPM Suite", information like this "User attribute" is defined by a grouping method referred to as "Role". And, in the App of "Account issuance-ML Registration", it is possible to schedule (automate) addition to and deletion from "Role"

Discussion: Impact on Business Process Modeling

In order to endeavor for more advanced "automatization of work", it is necessary to make the Workflow system fully understand the authority matrix written in "regulations of separation of duties". In other words, if there is a description "Only those who possess qualifications" is stated in the regulation, you should set up a Role of that qualifier.

In addition, even though information not written in the regulations, if Roles such as;

"Capable of covering West and Southwest", "Capable of covering Midwest", "Capable of covering Southeast and Northeast",
"Speaks Japanese", "Speaks English", "Speaks German"

have been set, it will be easy to design advanced allocation rules in a Business Process definition such as;

Person in Sales Department (organization) who can deal with a case in Southwest
Person who can understand English and Japanese in Translation team (organization).

[Account Issuance-ML Registration-Reservation:"1. Request for account" screen]