Design eSOP Workflows Overview

eSOP requires a person with expert knowledge in workflow development to design a workflow before a person with production-specific knowledge can construct task content for the workflow.

A workflow being used in eSOP must be designed for that specific use. A sample workflow template named Sample Sequential Template is part of installation. We recommend that you use this type of template as the basis of your eSOP workflow. To use any sample resource, you must duplicate and re-name it before you modify it.
Note: Changing the template associated with a task may have implications for the configuration of the task, such as rendering your task invalid if there are more steps in the template than in the task.

The following information outlines the design options for your workflow.

  • Develop a workflow, or use a duplicate version of the sample template.
    • To design a complete workflow, see Workflow Orientation.
  • In the Workflow Editor, customize the duplicated sample template. The following list contains key features that are specific to eSOP workflows.
    • The Load and Preprocess steps contains the service interface, IEsopRuntimeService. This service is used to access eSOP functionality from a workflow, such as: GetExtendedTaskInfoByName to retrieve the configuration of an eSOP task; JumpToTaskStep to start a jump in a sequential template.
    • The Presubprocess step, which runs at the beginning of every subprocess, performs any initialization work required for each subprocess in order to ensure that certain subprocess properties and resources are available during run time.
    • eSOP-specific activities. If your workflow contains logic related to linked documents and keyword activities, use the Read Task Definition and Read Task Step Definition to configure these resources to be available during workflow run time in the Load and Preprocess steps.
      Note: If you are using a copy of the Sample Sequential Template from a version older than Workflow 2.5, then you must update your existing workflow in order to access all the new functionality. As such, the new Categories property on the Read Task Definition and the Read Task Step Definition activities must be written to the Categories property on the workflow and subprocess respectively.
    • To provide more information at run time for the user, you can add Work Instructions or Linked Documents to a task or task step. Work instructions can be changed using keywords through the Update Work Instruction Keywords activity.
    • To use email to interact with users when a workflow is running, you can use the IEmailService service interface to send emails automatically to the appropriate user to indicate when tasks have started or expired. For example, depending on the context, you can use keywords to replace the text in the email subject and/or body to reflect the task being performed.
  • In the eSOP model, if you want to add custom forms for use by the Task Builder, add the related assembly in Config Panels.
  • Using Task Templates, associate a workflow with one of three eSOP template for use by Task Builders. You can also add custom forms for task that are available for use by the Task Builder.
  • Using Task Step Templates, you can associate a predefined global subprocess with your eSOP task template to add to your workflow. You can also add custom forms for task steps that are available for use by the Task Builder.
  • Keywords. You can add a list of the available custom keywords that the Task Builder can use when working with tasks. You can add keywords in two ways:
    • Use the Keywords tab in the Template Editor
    • Use a Replace Keywords or Update Work Instruction Keywords activity