Purpose
With SAP Business Workflow, you can map business processes in the R/3 System and process them (several times if required) under the control of the workflow system. A workflow management system can process and monitor structured processes that:
- Contain a sequence of activities
- Reoccur in the same or similar forms
- Involve several people of groups of people
- Require a lot of coordination
In addition to this general procedure model for working with SAP Business Workflow, there are also role-specific procedure models.
Prerequisites
Before working with SAP Business Workflow, you should have a clear idea of the areas in question and the extent to which you want to change and adapt business processes, and pass them over to electronic process control.
Process Flow
Use the following procedure model as orientation when working with SAP Business Workflow.
Organizational plan
The enterprise-specific organizational plan describes the organizational assignment of the employees. The aim of this is to determine the responsibility of employees for the execution of individual business activities in the form of activity profiles.
You maintain the organizational plan on a client-specific basis. You can use an organizational plan that was created (or is still being created) for HR purposes in SAP Business Workflow as well without making any changes, as long as the workflow functionality and the HR application are used in the same client.
Generally, however, in each client you (only) map those sub-areas and organizational structures of your enterprise, in which you also coordinate business processes using SAP Business Workflow.
Objects and object type definition
You identify all objects involved in your business process. You sort out which business function you want to map in your scenario and which attributes you want to access for control purposes.
You check whether the relevant object types with their methods, attributes and events are defined in the Business Object Repository. The grouping of object types in the application component hierarchy and the option of searching generically for parts of a name help when looking for object types.
- If you find an object type whose definition meets your requirements, you can use it without making any modifications.
- If you find an object type whose definition does not quite meet your requirements, you extend its definition.
- If you do not find a suitable object type, you define your own object type.
Single-step tasks
You identify the single-step tasks involved in your business process. Establish which object method is to be executed with the single-step task and who is responsible for executing it. You then define the single-step tasks by specifying object type and method, and determine the possible agents of the single-step tasks.
You check whether single-step tasks are already defined.
The single-step tasks available are not usually sufficient, meaning that you define additional single-step tasks to meet your requirements.
Standard roles
You identify possible agent roles in your business process. You use roles when agents are to be found using specific, business, functionally-oriented criteria.
You can initially do without roles in the test and development stage.
Events
You identify the events required to initiate and control the workflow and check whether these events are defined for the relevant object types.
If you require an event that is not incorporated in the standard version, you must add the event to the relevant object type definition and ensure that the event is created.
Multistep tasks
To describe a business process, which normally comprises several steps, you first create a workflow task and then reference a workflow definition in it.
You can use these workflow templates as a basis for your own developments, helping you to make a start. You can, of course, also use the definition tools to define new multistep tasks from scratch.
