Basics of Documentum Workflow

            Series of activities/tasks are called as Workflow.  Mostly these activities are performed on documents.  These activities can be performed by a user or by a group of users or by any system. Most common example for a workflow is ’Leave Application’. Following is the flow for basic leave application.

In above example we have series of activities like

1.      User submits leave application form. 

2.      Approver approves / rejects the application

3.      Updating the database

4.      Mail is sent to the user.

The activities can either be manual or automatic.  Manual activity is performed by User (Performers). Automatic activity is done by the system (i.e. not by user).

The document involved in this workflow is ‘Leave application form’.

How to design a Workflow:

            In documentum 6.x, the workflows are designed using the tool called “Documentum Process Builder”.  In process builder we have following Templates.

-         Manual Activity Templates, where we can select the performer.

-         Auto-Activity Template, where we can write our own code to be executed.

-         Pre defined Activity Templates

 A set of activity templates, each performing different functions are provided in process builder. Following are some of the pre-defined activity templates

·        DQL Read/Write

·        Link to Folder

·        Create ACL

·        Process Data Mapping

·        Create Folder

·        Invoke Process

With use of these templates we need to design our Workflow as shown below.

Approver is the manual activity and the performer is selected in activity template. Whenever the workflow is initiated, this Manual task goes and sits in the Approver’s Inbox.  Once the approver selects or rejects the application, the flow is decided accordingly.

One more important point is we need to configure which type of document should flow through this workflow. We call them as package. We can have one or more packages for a workflow.

Object types involved in Workflow:

Following are the important document types and attributes involved in workflow

Type	Explanation
dm_process	The workflow template we create using Process Builder is saved as dm_process object. We can call the process as blue-print of the workflow.
dm_activity	The Activity Template details are stored under this type.
dm_workflow	Created during runtime. Whenever we start a workflow, dm_workflow object is created. We can tell dm_workflow is the runtime instance of dm_process.
dm_workitem	Created during runtime. dm_workitem is runtime instance of dm_activity.
dmi_package	Created during runtime. It contains details about the documents attached to the workflow.

How these objects are related