I know I'm not the first to ask for something like this, but I couldn't find a post that fit exactly what I envisioned and I thought I'd describe a type of situation I've encountered many times now.
Something I would very much like to see is a Forms equivalent of the "Invoke Workflow" activity that can be used in the process diagram.
My use case is as follows, we have two different forms:
- Process A - "Building Access Agreement" form
- Process B - "Employee Change" form
Example 1 - Process A only
- Opening a new building/facility. Several current employees need access, but they are not relocating so their information won't change.
Example 2 - Process B only
- A mid-level promotion. Their information needs to be updated, but they're staying in the same office so there's no access change.
Example 3 - Both Process A and Process B
- Transfer to a new region. We need to update their information and have them sign the access agreement. This is where things get tricky.
Currently, there's no "easy" way to make Process B dependent upon an instance of Process A. We could create a copy of the form in Process B, or use workflows, wait conditions, external tables, etc., but either way, maintenance is unpleasant.
What would be extremely helpful is a new type of service task in Forms that could invoke a second business process with same kind of options you see with Invoke Workflow and Invoke Business Process in Workflow.
- Set starting values for variables
- A "Wait for invoked form/process to finish running" option
- Receive output/result variables
The parent-child functionality in Workflow is something we rely on heavily with different workflows calling a shared child, others that can run either on triggers or when invoked by a parent; the list goes on.
There's obviously a lot to figure out for something like this, but based on what @████████ mentioned recently in this thread, it sounds like things might already be heading in a direction that would support this functionality.