Question

Dynamically Change Users that Documents are Routed to

Version 9 Workflow Business Processes

Updated April 17, 2015

asked on April 16, 2015

Question: Is it possible to dynamically change the automatic routing of documents without having to republish a workflow or disable the user?

Scenario: I am looking to route documents to a specific department. The documents are currently routed manually to the team members that handle the different document types. Sometimes employees are sick, and the documents need to be routed to other team members.

Ideally I'm looking for a solution to distribute documents to the different team members automatically, while taking into consideration this issue. The documents generally are quite time sensitive, so waiting for deadline or escalation condition isn't really an option.

Thanks,

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replied on April 16, 2015

I had this with another client awhile back and the suggestion was to come up with a SQL database lookup. With that the person that it needs to be routed to could be changed in the SQL table so that if Joe is listed as "Out" then it will go to the next person that is "In" for that department. There will still have to be someone who can change the table when someone is out. This could be done through Microsoft Access so that they have a dashboard so to speak of employee's status and they can then update as needed so that they don't have to go into the SQL database directly.

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replied on April 16, 2015 • Show version history

Here is one of many possible ways of doing this:

1) Start with a Multivalue token that contains a list of Users that could potentially take this task, such that the first value corresponds to the person who normally would do this, the second is the backup, the third is the backup to the backup, and so on. Say then we have a list of 5 people, with the first being Cameron, second Derek, third Flavio, fourth Bob, etc. You can create such a token using the Assign Token Values activity, or it could be a Multivalue field on the relevant document, or any number of similar approaches.

2) When your workflow is ready to route the document to the person who will take charge, it uses a For Each Value loop to go through each name to figure out who should take the job, starting with #1, Cameron.

3) For each value, we do some sort of lookup to figure out whether the person (starting with Cameron) is currently able to take this routed document (for this we could do some SQL lookup as Derek suggested above, or some other mechanism... this part is somewhat open-ended). If Cameron can take the task, then Route the document to Cameron and end the Workflow. If not, then check on person #2, Derek, and repeat the same process, so on until every backup in the list has been checked on.

4) If it happens that EVERYONE in the list is sick/unavailable, you could handle that after the For Each Value loop, which will only be hit if nobody gets the routed document since we placed an End Workflow inside the loop. This may happen, for example, if there's a day off and someone forgot to update the workflow to account for that

This approach would look something like this:

Again, this is only one of many ways of doing it, but it's a fairly straightforward approach and has the added benefit of being easy to extend; for example, adding or removing one more "backup" is as trivial as adding/removing a value from the MV token =)

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replied on April 17, 2015

Derek's answer seems a bit simpler, so I may try this first. Once I get a handle on it, though, I will look at the solution you've indicated.

Thanks for the help!

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replied on April 17, 2015

Derek's suggestion should work perfectly well; It's a simpler workflow and gives more administrative control from outside of Workflow. You could even do a SQL query to pick out the first person from the tables that is not marked as being out, but that is also somehow flagged to handle this document. That'd be a fine way to do this without requiring too much administrative upkeep. There are tons of valid approaches =)

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Dynamically Change Users that Documents are Routed to

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