Workflow Soluiton

One of oft overlooked aspects of using Workflow Solution, like most IT development projects, is including the surrounding documentation for your business process. If you don't include clear documentation for the processes you automate, you will drive your auditors wild. Trust me on this.

Sure the workflow you built in Workflow Solution provides a Visio-like picture of the process itself, but at crunch time that's not enough to satisfy your least demanding auditors. You must provide more. This is also true for companies in highly regulated industries such as health care, insurance, finance, etc.

Workflow Solution provides four easy ways to include good documentation with your projects. You should use these techniques to document every process you build. They will save you many headaches at year-end when your auditors come to life!

1. Rename each component appropriately
   When you drag a component into your project it has a default description that you can easily rename by single clicking on the component. You should rename each component in your project to describe what it's doing. For example, instead of keeping the standard "Send Email" component description, rename it to something like "Send Email Notification to Approver" instead. This more amplified description tells everyone what the component is actually doing in the context of a given workflow. Rename all your components in this manner to make things clear.
2. Use annotation components as needed
   In the tree structure of the components' toolbox you will find a category named "Annotation." These annotation components allow you to further describe and document your process right inside the main model, but they have no affect at runtime because they do nothing - they are benign. When you annotate your process model you help the onlooker, including your auditors, better understand what each step in the process is doing.
3. Add a business model
   To the left of your component toolbox, in the upper left hand corner, you will see the name of your project. Simply right click on the project name to see a drop down list of additional options, one of which is named "New Business Model". This option will allow you to add a Business Model - more simple in design and content - to complement your actual process model. The Business Model allows you to define swim lanes and actions for your flow in an easy to understand format.
4. Include additional documentation
   To the left of your component toolbox, just beneath the name of your project, you will find an entry named "Model:Primary". Under this entry you can click "Documentation" and begin adding any documentation you desire to be associated with a given project. This documentation is free format in nature and should include the information your company, and auditors require.

When you're done, all of the above styles and formats of documentation can be compiled together with your project into a single HTML report. You can do this by accessing the "Plugins" drop-down menu at the top of the Designer, under which you will find an option named "Model Report." Run this model report to see all the documentation techniques described above in a single HTML report you can provide your auditors, management team, etc.

Don't drive your auditors wild. Document your workflows well.