Workflow warnings
The following article refers to functionality available in Workflow builder, which can be accessed in one of the following locations, depending on your configuration:
Administration -> HR -> Workflows
or
Administration -> HR -> Workflows -> Workflows
Workflows by their nature interact with many different parts of the system - it may be that you limit a workflow to a department or a time off type, or that checks get performed against documents, forms, reports and more.
As a result, it is sometimes possible that a workflow may not behave as expected, as an item or a number of items may no longer be active when the workflow is operational. For example, you might have deleted a document which is referred to in a "Send document for signing" workflow step.
Sometimes this is fine - if, for example, you have listed 3 sites as valid sites for a workflow and one of those no longer exist then the workflow will still trigger against the other two types. However, let's say you removed that site and then added it again and the workflow was ONLY set to trigger against that site, you would find that the workflow no longer triggers. This is because as far as the system is concerned the original site no longer exists, despite you having a new site with the same name.
To help identify issues of this type, we have added a warning function to workflows which will help identify some of the more common issues which can occur in workflows due to invalid references.
We check for:
- Departments
- Sites
- Headcount classifications
- Regions
- Job status
- Business unit
- Cost centre
- Companies
In all of the above we check that the item exists and that it is active.
Additionally, we also check for:
- Time off types (for Time Off Approval and Time Off Deletion Approval workflows)
- Forms (for Send New Form and Form Check steps)
- Recruitment stages (for Update Recruitment Stage steps)
- Library training courses (for Training Check steps)
- Templates (for Create Template steps - we check if the template exists and also if the template has the necessary Mandatory Document indicator)
- Reports (for Send Link to Report steps - we also check that the report has been shared, but not who it has been shared to)
- Pages (for Send Link to Page steps)
- Documents (for Send Link to Document steps and Send Document for Signing steps)
When sending the workflow to named people it is possible that the person you chose is no longer active so we additionally check any steps which are set to be sent to a named employee to ensure they are still active.
Finally, within a workflow it is possible to trigger another workflow, or move to a different step in the same workflow - we also check that:
- Workflow exists and is active (for a step which triggers a new workflow)
- Workflow step exists (for a step which moves to a different step in the same workflow)
Should any of the above checks fail, you will see a red warning triangle in the status column in the workflows screen:
You can click this to then see the warnings themselves:
In this example we are being told that the form in a "Send form" or "Check for form" step is not valid. It might have been made inactive or deleted. We can then investigate this form and replace it in the step if necessary by editing the workflow step.
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