Workflow best practices

[Former Member]

Hi all,

I am new to workflow, and I would like to know what are the best practices in WF design, for example locking objects, checking existence... It would be great if one of you guys can provide me with snapshots of the skeleton of generic WF for change or approval for example. Thank you in advance

Best regards,

Haku

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi,

How much time do you have?

When I started out, I first did the workflow tutorials provided in the SAP help (just select your library at help.sap.com and then click on the BC-BMT-WFM bit)

This will provide you with a basic understandig of worklflows.

furthermore I detest generic workflows. The really heart of every productive money making workflow is the business object for which part of SAP you're trying to automate a process. (business object can be viewed and tested with SWO1)

Kind regards, Rob Dielemans

[Former Member]

Hi,

I too started learning Workflows from this link...

http://help.sap.com/saphelp_erp2005vp/helpdata/en/fd/517b42303e0e53e10000000a155106/frameset.htm

I refered the Standard Business Objects and Workflow Templates to get to know the Best Practices...

I also refer <b>Practical Workflow for SAP</b> book till day.

To get more info about SAP Workflows, check this site...

https://websmp202.sap-ag.de/~form/sapnet?_SHORTKEY=01100035870000550824&;

Hope this helps.

Regards,

<i><b>Raja Sekhar</b></i>

[Former Member]

Thank you guys for your answers, but I really don't have much time, I know how to design a basic WF, but I don't know what the precautions I should take when making changes to data. As an example, suppose we want to change en EE address , do we have to check that there are no other workflows in parallel? do we have to lock the object before doing the change? do we even check the existence of the employee?...

[Former Member]

Hi,

Normally there are lots of business objects related to the business specific scenario, for which you're modelling a workflow.

For example for employees (Person administration module), there are the business objects BUS1065 and EMPLOYEET (there are of course other such as FAMILY).

Always look at these first to check if a method can be used, or which BO to extend (delegation).

In many cases there are also standard workflow supplied by SAP which can cover the functional requirement, or which can serve as a basis.

Locking objects your specific case, (i'm now not at work, so this is from the top of my head). enqueueing and dequeueing an employee is a method of bus1065/employeet (ther should also be a task for it). When making HR-PA flows, you could as a first step include an enqueueing of the person, if this fails, you could create a loop around it, which waits for let's day 5 minutes and then try it again, if after 20 times (or less) you can't enqueue an employee you can send a message to someone. This could be implemented in every workflow you make and I recommend it.

Kind regards, Rob Dielemans