Question

Dont know where to start with the workflow design

Workflow

Updated January 23, 2014

asked on January 23, 2014

I am trying to build my first workflow and it shouldn't be to hard, however I seem to be having trouble figuring out where to get started.

My Goal:

I work at a court, we currently have a phone number that attorneys can call if they will be running late to a hearing for that day. they have till 8:30am to call in, then we have someone here that listens to all the voicemails and compiles an email to all the courtroom clerks which attorneys and cases will be late. I have created a form using Laserfiche forms for the attorneys to use rather than calling in. what I want to accomplish is each form is getting saved in a specific folder in the repository and at 8:30 I would like a workflow kickoff and gather all the information from each pdf for the day and compile it into one pdf as a list and it auto send to the clerks email group. this way we can automate the entire process.

I have the forms ready and saving to the folder already I just don't know where to start with the workflow.

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replied on January 23, 2014

The next step will be to create some tokens that you can use in your master form and email.

I covered a similar workflow in the Intermediate Workflow Lab course at Empower 2014. I attached an image of the workflow with summaries here.

BPM203 - Intermediate Workflow Design -expanded.png (128.27 KB)

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replied on January 23, 2014

I took your class and I have the vm and I am following the workflow, that is how I came up with the steps that I have. thank you

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replied on January 23, 2014

That workflow is a thing of beauty, and is a great example!

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replied on January 23, 2014

Thanks!

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replied on January 23, 2014 • Show version history

The workflow you are using is showing that you are pulling information off a PDF form - you shouldn't need to do that if you are using the Laserfiche Forms product.

If you are using the Laserfiche forms product, you should consider upgrading to 9.1 to make placing the data inside laserfiche simpler. Then once the data is inside laserfiche you can simply grab all of the needed metadata from each field to make a multivalue token, then run a loop to make one big formatted multivalue token consisting of all the other multivalue tokens using an iteration counter, then display that token in your email.

So, say you have workflow A that routes all new form submissions to a folder with today's date. And each form routed now has 4 metadata fields with the info from your form: date, case #, Attorney, expected availability.

The potential monkey wrench is having blank fields in any of the 4 submitted fields - you can't allow that. Otherwise the iteration for each field when making the multivalue token for your email doesn't work right (Tokens won't allow a blank).

Once you're done you just display that multivalue token in your email.

***** ok, after posting mine I saw Sarah's post. Mine is the Yugo version versus the Lexus version...

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replied on January 23, 2014

Thinking off of the top of my head...

For the big picture, I would look at it with this process:

Search for all of the forms for today
For each form found
- Get the applicable information from the form - field, PDF, whatever
- Put that info into a multi-value token as the next entry, formatted properly for listing in the email
Send the email with the multi-value token to the clerks group

Of course, I'm sure there are rough edges and lots of testing cases to be done, but I'd start down this path.

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replied on January 23, 2014

Does this help?

Just a quick mock-up but hopefully it gives you the idea.

Like Chris said, you can't add a blank value to a token, so you probably need a Conditional around the "Add the value..." step to check for a null value.

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View 1 previous reply

replied on January 23, 2014

I'd image it'd be something like this:

{LF:Name="*", Type="DB"} & {LF:Created="%(Date)"} & {LF:LOOKIN="MyRepo\Form Submissions"}

An entry of any name, type document, created on the current date, in the following folder. Of course, you'll want to run the search in the Client to make sure it's returning the correct documents and then copy the syntax from the Advanced search box in the client.

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replied on January 23, 2014

im now getting an error on my workflow process piece of Retrieve Laserfiche Forms Content with Remote server returned an error (404) Not Found

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replied on January 23, 2014 • Show version history

It sounds like you're not able to connect to your Forms server. If you're running Forms 9.1, I'd recommend setting Laserfiche metadata fields in the Forms application with the values from the form itself. Then use a plain Retrieve Field Values activity in Workflow. (As Chris suggested.) If you're running a previous version of Forms (and don't want to upgrade), then you'll need to troubleshoot the connection to your Forms Server. I'm not sure what might be missing to make that connection fail. Here's a help page on configuring Forms 9.0 to work with Workflow.

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replied on January 23, 2014

So far this is what I have. I do not yet know how to get the information from the submitted forms to the master form.

wf1.JPG (20.92 KB)

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replied on January 23, 2014

I also found an article that discusses making tables in emails.

Presales Place_ E-mailing Search Results from Workflow _ Laserfiche VAR News.pdf (137 KB)

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Dont know where to start with the workflow design

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