Actions

WEBCON BPS has a new feature, which is the ability to work with attachments in the form of files stored on OneDrive. A user with the appropriate permissions will be able to edit such MS Office files (Word, Excel) in Microsoft 365 both in a desktop browser and from mobile devices. In addition, files placed on OneDrive as part of the process will be available for editing by multiple users at the same time, and any changes they make will be visible to others in real time.

The WEBCON BPS 2022 version introduces a new For each operator, which allows you to configure an action, operation, or automation for each element from the selected collection. The operator iterates over the collection elements, which can be an item list, any data source, attachments added to the workflow instance, and any collection defined as a business rule.

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.