By Kyle Knebel
December 2024 Consultants Corner
A Look at Three Awesome Workflows for Which You May Give Thanks This November!
Laserfiche’s built-in Workflow engine allows administrators to build automation into their Laserfiche environments. In this month’s article, we are going to review three workflow ideas that we think deserve some thanks for making our lives easier. Hopefully, you’ll learn something new as well!
Let’s look at the details of each of these workflows, and we’ll discuss some best practices for each, as well.
1) Auto-filing workflows
One of the most common workflows used for managing documents in a Laserfiche repository are the filing and naming workflows. In this example, we keep it simple. But in that simplicity lies great power. By automating the movement of a document to the correct location every time and then renaming the document saves users significant time and effort. With just three simple steps a document would be quickly filed and named, all happening in under one second!
In the image below, we can see there are three simple activities running. Usually the activities run against the “starting entry”, in other words on the entry that triggered the start rule for the workflow. Using the information on the document, like field information, can help with automatic filing and renaming.
2) Workflows that Start a Form submission automatically
Here’s an activity in Laserfiche Workflow that can start a Forms business process and feed the fields on the starting form with information. It’s called “Invoke Business Process”. This workflow activity can be pointed to a Starting form in a Forms Business Process and insert data into the available form fields. The workflow submits the form as part of the action, such that the form proceeds to the next step in the business process. In other words, it will behave as if someone filled out and submitted the form. Except Workflow did it, not a person!
You’ll need to define the fields (aka Variables) that you will be filling out on the form. You might not use all of them, so pick what you need.
Once you have selected the Fields, you’ll need to set the values on those fields. This is done in the “Starting Variable Values” box.
Add the selected variables and enter static text or tokens after the equal sign. The fields can be listed vertically as seen in the image below. On the Date variable, we’ve set a token for today’s date. On the Employee Name variable, we’ve set a static text for the name.
3) Workflows that Set Security on Folders
Did you know the Laserfiche Workflow includes the ability to set security on entries in the repository? This capability allows you to assign groups (and users) access rights to folders or documents. Of course, Best Practices tells us to assign groups access rights to folders, right?!
As you can see in the image below, the “Assign Rights” activity has been added to the workflow canvas, although it’s been renamed slightly.
For example, we would like to have the workflow find a folder (using the “Find Entry” activity), then give the “Demo Group” specified Rights, Inheritance and Scope on that folder.
The Assign Rights activity allows you to set the Trustee (a trustee is just a Group or User) who will be assigned access to the associated entry. The entry could be a starting entry or, in this case, the entry from the Find Entry activity before it. Also, Inheritance and Scope can also be set.
Be aware that each activity can only set one Trustee’s access, so you may need to use multiple Assign Rights activities to accomplish your needs. For example, if you need to assign access to the folder for two groups, you’d have two Assign Rights activities, respectively, in the workflow.
After adding the activity to the canvas, go to the Rights Options section on the right-side properties box and click on the “No Trustee has been set” link. A pop-up dialog box appears when you click on the required trustee setting option, as seen in the image below.
In the image below, we can see the Trustee, Rights, Inheritance and Scope properties being applied to the selected trustee, in this example to the “Demo Group” group.
Once all the appropriate Rights Options properties are selected, click OK.
Now you can Assign the rights to the Starting Entry or to a selected “Other Entry”, in this example to the Output Entry of the “Find Entry” activity in the previous step.
This concludes our review of the three workflows that we are most thankful for this November!
Happy Holidays!
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