Introduction to Publishing a Flow

Overview

When a workflow has been published the contents of the flow become available for an end-user to view.  Workflows in Decisions have whatever functionality available that it was specifically created for.  This means that each publication will have a number of different elements that activate it. The workflow in Decisions requires getting value out of the parts because it is beings used and the data is manipulated by the designer and end-user. These elements are specific to the operation of the active working flow. Some of these elements include defining schedules for the flow, publishing on a workflow catalog, adding an action to a dashboard, and exposing the workflow on an API.

• Scheduled Jobs
• Workflow Catalog
• Add an Action on a Dashboard
• Expose as an API

Scheduled Jobs

A flow can be scheduled to run at a certain time every day.  For example, a flow can be set to run every day at midnight with a task to send out specifics as to which salesperson made the greatest number of calls, or which person worked the longest amount of hours. This data can be defined and gathered for the purpose of publishing data to allow monitoring by other systems. All of the different elements that allow a workflow to be scheduled, published or call data from a different system are accessible using API CALL REST or a  SOAP CALL. Learn how to use these elements by navigating to the integration details page, this page describes in detail how all of these elements are called and published.

Workflow Catalog

A Workflow Catalog is the end-user view of a published workflow. Workflows are exposed within the user portal and any of the flows can be published out of the workflow catalog. In addition to being able to take a link that you get from the integrations details page and then put in anywhere in the environment that you would like to, you can also automatically expose it out within the Decisions user portal itself. The workflow catalog will respec User security so End Users only see what they have been granted in the permissions to access/view.

Add an Action to a Dashboard

When an action is added to a dashboard the action can kick off a workflow within Decisions. Adding an action to a Dashboard is one of the ways that a workflow is published and the End User can access the action on the dashboard to start the published workflow. The actions on the dashboard respect User security so that the End Users will only see actions that have been granted to them to access/view.

How To Call a Form on An External System

In the same way that a Dashboard can activate a workflow through an action, any software that Decisions integrates with can also be used to call information that may trigger a flow, call a rule or get data from a report. This same integration mechanism can be linked to directly invoke a flow with a form in it. If you have a flow with a form, you can publish a URL on the internet, on an external website or even an event to distribute via email. This will allow the user to interact with one of the Decisions assigned or external forms that were created and hosted within a flow. These functionalities can be used as pieces to gather or integrate data that needs to be published. All of these features can consume data,  and trigger a flow by calling a web service.  With any of these elements, the ability of a particular User to call any element is governed by User security. The permissions are granted and can be directly assigned to the location of the objects and elements by adding the User to a group or giving specific rights as an administrator.