Default Workflow Processes
Oracle Projects provides default Workflow processes for project status changes and budget submission and baseline. You may customize the processes or create new processes, using the Oracle Workflow Builder.
If you want to create a new process to meet your company's needs, use the Oracle Workflow Builder to create a new process, or copy the existing default and change its name before making extensive changes to it.
Customizing Workflow
When customizing a Workflow, we recommend that you customize the Workflow item processes and the loop counters, but not the messages. Instead, you should create a new message. The reasons are explained below:
- When you create a process definition, Oracle Workflow Builder assigns a new version number to an activity if you make changes to it. It saves the new version of the activity to the database without overwriting older versions of the activity. In Oracle Workflow, activities also have dates of effectivity so that at any point in time, only one version of the activity is "in effect".
If a process is running, Oracle Workflow uses the version of the activity that was in effect when the process was initiated. It does not switch versions of the activity mid-way through the process. Since a process itself is an activity, a process definition always remains constant until the process instance completes.
- Oracle Workflow Builder does not maintain version information for objects such as item types, item type attributes, messages and lookup types. For these objects, their latest definition always applies, so you must consider whether a change to any of these objects is backwards compatible. If the modification affects existing processes, you should create a new object rather than edit the existing object.
See Also
Oracle Workflow Guide
Default Project Workflow Process
Default Budget Workflow Process
Project Status Change Workflow
When a project status change is integrated with Workflow in Oracle Projects , a project is routed to one or more destinations for approval when a status change is made, if Workflow is enabled for the project status and the project type.
Figure 1 - 49 shows a typical flow of status changes for a project. The names of projects statuses are user-defined, and the statuses you create for your business may be different from those in the example. You may have some projects that require several status changes, while other projects (those with a short duration, for example) may have fewer status changes, and may not require approval. Oracle Projects enables you to implement the status flow you require for each project, and to use Workflow to automate the approvals and processes involved with each status.
Workflow integration is not limited to approval of a project or other status changes. You can also configure the system to initiate Workflow for any status change.
Examples of Project Life Cycles Using Workflow
Figure 1 - 50 shows a project status flow where Workflow is used for two status changes during the life of a project:
1. A user manually sets the status to Submitted for Approval. A Workflow process is initiated. If the Workflow process is successful, the status is updated to Approved.
2. A user manually sets the status to Pending Close. A Workflow process is initiated. If the Workflow process is successful, the status is updated to Closed.
In Figure 1 - 51, Workflow is used for each status change after the project is submitted for approval.
In Figure 1 - 52, approval Workflow is initiated as soon as the project is created. Another Workflow process sends notifications when the project status is changed to Approved #2. A third Workflow process generates transactions and submits processes when the project status is changed to Pending Close, and verifies that the processes have completed successfully before changing the status to Closed.
