Workflow

"A workflow is a depiction of a sequence of operations, declared as work of a person, a group of persons, an organization of staff, or one or more simple or complex mechanisms" [1]

Dynamics AX 2009 ships with an integrated workflow engine. As stated above, a workflow is a sequence of operations that defines how a "business document" is handled. In Dynamics AX 2009 there are two differnt types of operations: A task and an approval. Where a task can be anything that requires interaction with the workflow. An approval also requires an interaction, but has four pre-defined outcomes: Approval, Deny, Reject and Request Change.

Handling Workflows
The workflow component is shipped on the Dynamics AX 2009 DVD and has to be installed seperatly. It requires an IIS 6 or higher and the .NET business connector to communicate with Dynamics AX. Befor installing it is recommended that the AOS is not running with network service account, but has an own AD user.

Dynamics AX already contains some approval workflows. The predefined workflows can be enabled and configured using the workflow configuration form at the corresponding module. For example "General Leger" > "Setup" > "Workflow configuration". A workflow configuration in Dynamics AX is versioned. When a configuration is changed, the version number is increased. The workflow configuration can be used to define:
 * messages for the interacting user
 * conditions for the workflow
 * assignment, either role-based or user-based
 * timeout and escalation
 * messages on events
 * sub-workflows

Workflows are full traceable. Each workflow instance can be inspected at "Basic" > "Inquiries" > "Workflow history". Workflow instances can be filtered by state like finished, comleted, canceled. The overview grid shows the main instance information, like name, started and finished date and user. The tabpages below show details for each instance. The screenshot shows the sequence of tasks and for each operation when it was started, whom it was assigned and the taken action. Item 0005 was approved by Charlie Carson from purchasing department at 21.6 21:40



Example
See the ItemApprovalWorkflow

Links and References

 * [1] Wikipedia:Workflow
 * [2] MSDN Dynamics AX 2009 SDK: Workflow