Workflow Sample

"I can hardly get rid of mistakes in Catalogue mailing..."

You want to correspond to "Request for a Catalogue", which you have accepted via published web form, as quickly as you can. However, it won't be a joke if you made mistakes in the "Address" or "Company name" that the customer has entered. When creating "Cover sheet" with Microsoft Word by Copy & Paste, for example, made mistake that shifted ane line of the record in the list to be referred, and results in complaint,such as

Our company name is not like this.
There is no employee in the name of this.

In the worst case, it might be a "Personal information leakage incidents".

In the following Business Process, "a personnel in charge of accepting" checks entries via web form

if the address was not inappropriate such as erroneously submitted in the middle of the input?
if the address was not nonsense for mischief purpose?
if it does not contain abbreviations or unnecessary space?

After the check, "Cover sheets PDF" will be generated automatically, then "a personnel in charge of Mailing" will print it out and enclose the Cover sheet with the Catalogue. No manpower be involved, there.

The excellent point is that not a "list" will be created in this business operation. The risk of information leakage will be extremely reduced. And as soon as the sealing job is completed, data such as "company name" and "telephone number" will be automatically added to the Cloud-based database. (Although it is apparent, it is also assumed a flow to ask "Sales representative" in case of receiving a message such as "Want an estimate together".)

[Catalogue Request Correspondence]

I introduced a fully automated Workflow that is

> to update the Workflow platform common "Client Master" by receiving JSON response from kintone API,

in the last post.

In this post, I would like to introduce how to

> Update the "Client Master" in kintone by sending JSON data to kintone API.

More specifically, it is a mechanism that suppliers (customer code and customer name) is added to the "customer master" on the kintone, upon the moment when a start of trading in the "Credit Management Workflow" has been approved.

After all, it is configured that JSON string such as

{
  "app": "3",
  "record": {
    "customerCode": {
      "value": "9999999999999#www.example.com"
    },
    "customerName": {
      "value": "XYZ Inc"
    }
  }
}

POSTed to kintone API at the downstream of the Workflow.

* JSON: JavaScript Object Notation (Mass of data in which the pair of "key" and "value" have been enumerated)

[Credit Management]

"Customer list" is typical of "database". (Weather managed in paper or in computer.)

Data stored in "Database" is roughly classified into

A) Master information (Master type data)

Product master
Client master
Price list, etc.

B) Log information (Transaction type data)

Payment history
Orders record
Access log, etc.

And in day-to-day business, there are many occasions that you want to refer to data which is classified in A), master type data.

The following Business Process is a mechanism to synchronize "Client Master data" in the Workflow environment with client master information which is managed in "kintone", a Cloud Database, on a daily basis. (It may be considered as a Batch processing.) It is excellent for not only all the Steps having been automated, but also being capable of manually synchronization at any time.

After all, it becomes possible to refer the latest "Client Master" in a variety of business, such as "Estimate Process", "Order report Process", or "Billing Process". You might be able to eliminate so-called "name identification". (Moreover, it also has the meaning of auto-backup of data in kintone.)

[Client Master Synchronization]

"Reminder notification of Maintenance service contract renewal on the same date in 12 months later."

When I design, for example, a Contract Process, I would want an Email alert (Email reminder). That is, I want to arrange an Event to transmit an email at the most downstream of the business flow. That is referred to as [Throwing Message Event (Email)] in the terminology of "Process Modeling" (BPMN terminology).

However, the Process will take one year for all the Steps to be completed, if you have setup naturally.
(Even though any other Steps have been completed up to Conclusion of contract...)

Although this may depend on personal preference, I feel uncomfortable that the status of the Issue remains in "Running" just for not yet sending the "Reminder email". If the "Time until all the Steps to be completed" is measured as KPI in your organization, it will truly be an "annoying presence".

The following Workflow is a Business Process of Email reminder part that is independent. (It is too simple to refer to as a Business Process, though.) In short, it is a mechanism that just to accept "messages" from various Business Processes, and to transmit them at "Reminding date and time".

[Remind Notification]

"I wish I could do my input more smoothly..."

A business system is evaluated more or less by its "Operating screen". Just try to recall your day-to-day jobs, such as "Attendance report", "Decision-making request", "Contract report", "Answer to inquiry", so on... Most of the Delays and reworks that occur on these jobs are caused by "erroneous input or Inappropriate input at upstream Steps".

The following Workflow has been devised to input by clicking on the "Input sample button".

By a button being there, the concentration of inputting personnel will be sustained. Furthermore, occurrence of careless mistakes will be reduced. Even though you won't understand the advantage of "Input sample button" unless you experience, it is another input support that is different from a method of Selecting from options or Configuration of initial value. Even though it is just a button, it helps to go piled up a "sense of doing" of operators because it is their own input!?? And (something like) "CPU load" that give to the brain of the operator will drop significantly.

[Test flow for Input form]

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]

Want to automate "Prorated billing".

Rent, Water charge, Cloud service... In any field, "invoicing process" is a very important business. No mistake is allowed. Even though a human would do the credit investigation and address input, I want to let a computer do the calculation of "prorating".

Indeed, a computer is a machine.
It makes no mistake.
And it is fast.

But on the other hand, it also has stupidity such as, one third multiplied by three equals "0.999". There is not much difference about this aspect between a calculator and a supercomputer. (Oh, I hear voices of objection from users of J programming language, etc.)

In the following Workflow, prorating calculation for "a service which monthly fee is 10,000 JPY" is automated.

It is a simple sample flow that, inputting information of "used X days in month MM of year YYYY", then automated until "generating of invoice PDF".

In this example, as obvious on the flow chart, even an "Approval Step" or a "Send-back Step" is not arranged for the sake of simplicity. A very plane Business Process. Therefore, it is useful as a base for the development of applied system, such as "printing out automatically" or "automatically transmit email with attachment".

[Invoice Issuance flow]