Workflow Sample

'Date in Japanese calendar!'

"Representation of years" is complicated in Japan. That is, We do not say "year 2016" at the governmental procedure or at schools. This year is absolutely "Heisei 27". The date is represented in "Japanese calendar" in documents which have a little bit of importance, such as "Residence certificate", "Family registration", or "Graduation diploma"...

However, in reality,,, only a few Japanese can immediately answer that "this year is Heisei 28!"

Even so, this "mechanism of resetting to the first year (year 1), once in several decades" is continued already 1400 years or more. It is too much significant for the government of the time to abolish... (And, on the day the current emperor died, another new "era name" will be published.)

The following is a flow of "Employment certification" issuance.

It has devised that at an upstream Step, the employee's 'name' and "birth date' are entered, and the a certificate PDF is automatically generated at [Auto-step] in the middle of the flow. Notably, date data such as "date of birth" and "certificate issue date" is automatically converted to the Japanese calendar. It could be diverted also to issuance flow for, for example, "Graduation certificate" or "PTA News", etc.

[Certificate Issuance]

'I can't handle approval on travel request from all these guys all alone...'

Whatever an organization chart could be, "a leader" is essential to its respective departments. Especially, the role of "leader" is important in determining "the Policy of department" and "the Goal of the department".
However, speaking about the day-to-day approval job, it is not necessary to be performed all by "one leader".

For example, if an operation such as "approval on business trip" in the "section" of about 10 to 20 personnels , you should let the "deputy manager" and "assistant manager" to do proxy approval actively. There is also meaning of clarifying the responsibilities and rank within the department. (There may be a definition in the business rules of the company, such as "Substitute on duties when there was an accident on the section chief".)

Incidentally, such a system can be seen often also in the "Operations of government" which blank period of procedures is not allowed. (e.g.:"State-Owned Articles Management Act, Institutions of surrogate officer"(Only in Japanese) The rules of surrogate (Only in Japanese))

[Travel Request]

"We are trying to do all the work on Workflow. So please make Time and attendance reports also possible on Workflow!"

Attendance management (Time and attendance report) is performed by "Time card" in many companies. (Monthly confirmation)

However, if you are doing the routine work on the Workflow, you should consider how to make possible to report of "Coming to work" and "Leaving work" on the Workflow as well. Above all, it is significant that it allows real-time confirmation on the attendance of "Persons in positions of supervision or management" (Article 41 of Labor Standards Act in Japan). (Daily confirmation)

In this Workflow, a Task of "1. Coming to work Report" will be allocated as [My Task] to all the employees at 7 o'clock in the morning of every weekday.

Each employee will register the time of start working by clicking on the [Now] button upon starting to work to finish the Task of "1. Coming to work Report". (Of course, arbitrary time can be entered manually as well.) Likewise, handle the Task of "2. Leaving work Report" at the end of the day's work. Incidentally, in case someone forgets clock-out, the regular time will be recorded automatically. (For a day of regular time work, only reporting in the morning is enough.)

It might be rather a natural mechanism for a company in which a lot of "Teleworkers", "Remote workers" or "Outside sales people", etc.

[Attendance Report flow]

I'm going to consider "Starter Template" of the 2016 edition.

This time, it is going to be the 3rd of the series, "Out-of-pocket Expenses Claim" in simplicity.

This Workflow will be Started by sending an email with attachment of receipt image taken with Smart phone. (Email Start)

Despite Reimbursement claim for Out-of-pocket Expense is carried out collectively at the end of months in most companies, in this example, it must be done at each time payment occurs. It is a focused to ease the management of the correspondence between the receipt image. After all, it is a business flow to let an employee to make E-mail application at the moment of getting a receipt, such as taxi fare or dining bill. It should be noted, it must be sent from a company email address (Login ID] of the workflow).

(That is not difficult for employees of a company that has introduced a Cloud-based email system like Google Apps.)

By the way, although it might needless to say again, this Workflow is a Business Process in anticipation of "Regulation change (around January 2017) that allowing to discard the original receipt replacing with the receipt image taken with smartphone".

Even though it seems "Premature" to include this into "Starter Template pack" of 2016 edition, yet it is significant to be ahead of the next generation toward the coming era of "Taking picture of Receipt with Smart phone". We should actively operate this Workflow in commissioning, and prepare by organizing various issues on its operation in advance. (Be aware that you are required to store the "original receipts" until the end of 2016. In addition, it is different from the regulation which has been enforced in October 2015, in the point of "Image of Scanned receipt".)

[Out-of-pocket Expenses Claim]

I'm going to consider "Starter Template" of the 2016 edition.

This time, it is going to be the 2nd of the series, "Procurement Request" in simplicity.

This procurement flow is a Workflow that allows you to comfortably make requests for anything you think you want to or should buy.

That is, it is possible to request for anything, as long as being an employee, from consumable goods such as "copy paper", "drinking water", or "detergent", to fixtures like "desk", "vacuum cleaner", or "personal computer". However, it is left to the Procurement Department for actually whether or not purchased. Especially, for those difficult to determine the need and urgency, it will be in a status of "pending the decision for purchase" for long term.

Incidentally, "being approved on the Approval flow" in advance will be the premise of purchasing of the "application for purchasing items of more than 100,000 JPY ".

[Procurement Request]

I'm going to consider "Basic Business Pack" of the 2016 edition.

This time I will introduce a simple "approval flow", for the first of the series.

It's nothing but basically

an employee submits a plan and
his/ her superior approves it.

That's what it's all about.

This Workflow is just a good template to "get used" to the online Workflow system. It will be sufficient to give some alteration to "Remark" (input hint) in the input form for your own usage. Yet, it will be more likely to be used longer.

If you are

thinking to quit approval documents in paper
feeling a limit to the approval documents management in MS-Excel or Google Spreadsheet

I would like you to try running it within a small team for commissioning by importing this Workflow to "Questetra BPM Suite", a Workflow platform for Free

[Planning-Approval flow]

The last time, I published a case of cooperation with "Corporate Identification Number System" (Web-API).

◇2015-12-07: Brush-up on Customer Master Data by "Corporate Identification Number System Web-API"

This Business Process is a mechanism to automatically check if "the Names of Businesses in connection have changed" or not every week. It is automatically started at six o'clock in every Sunday morning. Human beings can detect naturally something to be corrected has occurred in "Customer Master (XML)".

However, it is on the assumption that "all the company has a Corporate Number". That is, it makes inquiry about all the companies listed one by one toward the "Web-API system". In reality, there exist trade partners who do not have Corporate Number. (Sole traders, foreign companies, etc.)

In the following Business Process Definition, it tolerate the presence of dummy number of "9999999999999" (13-digit 9) in the "Customer Master".

That is, it is the rule that to register "13-digit 9" for the business partners like overseas clients that do not have a Corporate Number. In addition, it is devised to make request for 10 instances at one time, toward "Web-API system".

[Automatic check of Trade-name Registration in Customer Master #2]