Building a Workflow Process

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An essential service provided by Microsoft Access Workflow Designer is that of creating and executing a workflow process. The workflow process is a series of tasks or actions, the order in which they must be performed, permissions defining who can perform them, and code that can be run when they are performed.

Before you can add workflow to your team solution, you must do the following:

• Have a Microsoft SQL Server™ database that follows the schema guidelines for a team solution. For details, see Creating and Registering Solution Databases.

• Have database owner (dbo) permissions for the database.

• Register the database as a team solution in the Access Workflow Designer, so it can support workflow functionality. For details, see Creating and Registering Solution Databases.

• Designate a table hierarchy to set the main and details tables in your team solution. For details, see Identifying Main User Tables.

• Plan the business processes you wish to track, including the tables involved, the roles involved, when the actions are permissible, and what parts of the process are possible offline.

Once your database is ready to add workflow, you can use the Workflow Process wizard to create new or designate existing workflow states. For more information, see Adding a Workflow Process to your Solution. This creates a linear workflow process - state1 to state2 to state3. In every workflow diagram, in addition to these workflow states, there are start and end blocks created by the wizard. There are also connections between the states representing the state transitions.

Once the wizard finishes, the workflow diagram is displayed in the Access Workflow Designer Workflow Process pane. The main diagram shows the states, the transitions between them, and the actions associated with the states.

In this diagram, the states are Active, Resolved, and Closed. The actions are listed under each state. The transitions, which are special types of actions, are Resolve and Close.

Using the workflow diagram, you can modify the workflow to handle non-linear business processes. For example, after an issue has been closed, perhaps a user in the manager role must be able to reopen it. This necessitates adding an additional state, called Reopened, and the appropriate actions, including two transitions, Reopen and Reresolve.

For more information on planning workflow for your team solution, see The Workflow Engine Model.