Actions

Automations are an overhaul to the Action mechanism in WEBCON BPS 2022. Existing actions will be incorporated into Automations which aim to provide:
1) Visual clarity and easier management of large numbers of actions
2) Robust error handling
3) "Temporary" Local parameters that are discarded after the Automation completes

When processing an instance in a given workflow, sometimes there is a need to change fields available to a user or manage privileges to the instance. You can use the “Change form type” action, which allows you to change the type of the form you are currently working on. This action is available only for the Menu button trigger. An example workflow for registering contracts has been created. Access to individual contracts depends on the confidentiality level, which can be changed.

Electronic documents often contain barcodes that allow you to find the appropriate document in the system using a barcode scanner. The “Read a barcode” action is used to decrypt information saved in the barcode and transfer it to the WEBCON BPS form. The action supports a wide range of numeric and alphanumerical barcode standards such as Code 128, EAN-13, QR Code, UPC-E. The “Read a barcode” action allows you to read the barcode content from the attachment added to the process instance and enter it on the form. The wide range of barcode standards supported by the action makes it a universal tool.

This article describes the “Read data from an Excel file” action that allows you to import data from an Excel file to the form. It can be especially useful when the process requires entering many slightly different documents – thanks to this, you can quickly complete fields on the WEBCON BPS form. It also can be used when you do not want to create accounts and give access to internal company resources to external people. We have created the simple “Leave requests” workflow with the “Read data from an Excel file” action. It allows an employee (who temporarily does not have access to the company’s intranet) to submit a leave request.

The “Item list” form field is used to store any number of data rows organized into columns. In business practice, there is a need for the item list to be updated based on the values from other elements or updated automatically, and a user cannot edit it. For this purpose, you can use the “Change items list values” action which will be presented in this article based on the simple “Invoice approval” workflow. The "Change items list values" action is a useful tool that allows you to edit the value of the item list. The available three modes of this action provide full possibilities of automatic and configurable modification of the item list, without the participation of the user filling out the form.

WEBCON BPS has a mechanism that allows you to transfer process definitions between several independent environments. The DEV-TEST-PROD environment model is fully supported, in which the development environment (DEV) model is designed to create new processes, the test environment (TEST) is used to perform functional tests before the final implementation of the solution on the production environment (PROD) on which the users work.

In workflow instances, there is often a need for people who do not have active tasks at the indicated steps to have appropriate privileges and be able to e.g. view (read privileges) or edit an instance. In such a situation, you can use the action of adding/removing privileges at the level of individual workflow instances. You can find these actions in the “Actions” tab of a given workflow. They are most often used for entering/exiting a step and on transition paths.

The Run an SQL procedure action allows you to invoke SQL procedures from the WEBCON BPS form level, and to prepare the universal SQL queries with variables. This functionality is limited only by the capabilities of the SQL query language. It is possible to invoke SQL procedures using data in the WEBCON BPS form and enter/update data in the database. The correctly configured "Run an SQL procedure" action allows an end-user to access database resources and to edit them without the need to know the SQL language. However, please note that this edition is limited by the action configuration.

In the WEBCON BPS system, the processed instances move from one workflow step to another. Tasks are assigned in these steps, and users or groups of users assigned to these tasks must perform an action. WEBCON BPS has a comprehensive tool that allows you to choose who the task should go to in the next step; it is configured in the ‘Task assignment’ tab on the path that links two steps.


However, this is not the only way to assign a task to the user. This article discusses how you can use the “Choose an approver” action to assign a task. This action allows for greater flexibility when selecting the approver because you can enable the user to send the task to their direct supervisor or assign it to the approver based on any condition you define. If there is no approver who meets the criteria, there will be an error; it can be handled by displaying an error message to the user or assigning the task to a predefined approver.

This article describes how you can create, delete, and edit individual users in WEBCON BPS, using a standalone installation (one that operates without SharePoint). These features have been introduced with version 2020.1.3 of the program. You can also use BPS groups to manage users.

You can set up a simple workflow for creating, editing, and removing BPS users' accounts as the one shown in this article. If you add to it actions for managing BPS groups, you will create a platform for user administration and facilitate your administrator’s work.