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Userґs Guide

Grailsflow allows you to manage processes, their definitions and activities related to a process. This user's guide describes some of the basic features of Grailsflow and how you can use them.

Start Process

Start by clicking the menu item 'Start Process' and review all available process definitions. When you select a definition (or process type) you start a process of that type.

After a process was started the 'Process Details' page with process flow information is displayed. If the start node is "interactive" a 'Start Node Details' page is shown. This page allows the user to change the default values for the available process variables. After pressing an action (or event) button, the process starts using these variables values.

List Processes

The 'List Processes' menu contains a list of started processes and the allowed operations for each process. When you click on a process, you see all details of the process, it's nodes and their statuses. Also, it is possible to view a graphical representation of started processes (visited nodes, untouched nodes, interactive nodes which are currently waiting for user actions, etc.). The graphic shows all nodes of the selected process with their statuses (marked by different colors). Any active process can be killed.

Show Worklist

'Show Worklist' menu item contains list of nodes that are waiting for user input. It is possible to click on the node ID and see the 'Node Details' page with information about the selected node. In the 'Node Details' page it's also possible to review and change process variables values and select an event, that get's sent to the node. Events and their names can be seen as the name of the transition to another node. After the event has been sent the 'Process Details' page is displayed.

Edit Process Types

'Edit Process Types' page show a list of available process definitions. This menue allows to add, edit or delete process. On the 'Process Editor' page (when process type for edit is selected) there are two tables:

• the list of process variables definitions and
• the list of process nodes definitions. For each node definition it is possible to review the node transitions and edit them. Forms can be defined for interactive nodes. Additionally the user can define actions that get executed when a node is entered.
  

Graphical Preview

The process editor gives a graphical preview of the process. The preview is generated automatically, the nodes are placed automatically, so the resulting image might need adjustment to be used in a process documentation.

Actions

The process editor includes an action editor to define actions for each node. Actions can have conditions (if - then - else). There are several predefined actions (eg. SendMail, Log, Evaluate), however the predefined actions can easily be extended. To end the actions, you can return a value. The return value is the name of the transition to the next node.

Node Types

Node can have different types:

• "Wait"-Nodes wait for input, so they are visible in the worklist of the user that is assigned to that node. You can define actions and forms for this node type.
• "Activitiy"-nodes execute actions without waiting for user input. You can define actions for this node type.
• "Split" nodes allow to split the workflow, so that multiple steps are executed in parallel.
• "Join" nodes are the opposite to split nodes. The join nodes waits for all is predecessors to end, before it goes on to the next step (they implement a logical AND)

Analyze Response Time

Allows to analyze the response time of executed processes. GrailsFlow searches all process nodes for a process type, determines the time used for each node, then checks for the min., max. and average time and displays them on screen. The process type nodes can be sorted by minimum and maximum execution time, by the average execution time, etc.

Show Documents

'Show Documents' presents the documents that are attached to processes. Documents are stored as simple files in the file system. For each day, a directory is created. If you click on the directory, you can see the list of files uploaded on that day.