Workflow

The Vista HMRS workflow component allows flow information with or without related documents to be passed around to different users in an pre-ordered fashion, with optional requirements for input and decisions at each step, allowing for flow changes based on the input. Users are notified of flows via the Vista browser and by email.

• Vista HRMS includes a middle tier service, e-Assistant, that facilitates the flow of activity between requests and approvals. This service provides an array of services including task scheduling, system account and email directory management, and workflow processing to extend Vista HRMS’s HR functionality. Click here for more information on e-Assistant (Enterprise Server).

• One of the schedulable task types can be a flow. Moreover, attachments, other information, and email addressees that might need to be part of an initiated flow can be attached by e-Assistant.

• e-Assistant enhances Vista HRMS’s basic role resolution capability by integrating it into the PDS Vista HRMS database. For example, a flow can be created where the flow would pass from an individual to his manager or from an individual to all of his or her direct reports, whomever they might be. (It does so by using MS-Exchange’s simple organizational structure.) First, the usage of Exchange’s organizational structure is facilitated by e-Assistant’s ability to automatically maintain it. Second, e-Assistant allows flows to be created that use Vista HRMS’s organizational links that are not understandable by Exchange. Hence, a workflow can now be passed, for example, to the departmental secretary.

• When flows are initiated through e-Assistant, a subsequent task can be added as a delayed dependent task to be executed only if a subsequent command arrives to indicate that it should be run. For example, if a new person is to be hired, the appropriate person can tell e-Assistant to kick off the new-hire flow, passing to it all of the information about the applicant. e-Assistant maintains the information to process the action in a suspended state—not to be run until told otherwise. e-Assistant simultaneously kicks off the flow, sending the applicant’s information to the appropriate managers to review. If and only if the managers agree to hire the person does a message come back to e-Assistant to activate the suspended task, which then kicks off.

• Moreover, in between the time the flow is initiated and the time when e-Assistant should process the final event, the flow can be designed such that appropriate people can modify the parameters of the action. For example, if a new-hire process is initiated, the first person in the flow might type in the applicant’s name incorrectly. Someone else downstream in the flow can still change the name before e-Assistant finishes processing the action.

In addition to initiating flows, e-Assistant can be a node in an in-progress flow. As a node, it can add pre-defined information to the flow and then reroute it. Additionally, it can schedule or kick off some other task. (This is the capability that allows it to wait, in the above example, for the appropriate managers to approve a job candidate before kicking off the appropriate database updates.) This can also be used in other situations, such as to prevent payroll jobs from running until all timesheets have been added into the system.

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