Configuring workflows and processes

Workflows represent the company’s different document flows. They’re completely configurable and define the path that any individual Open ERP object (such as an order) must follow depending on the conditions (for example an order over a certain value must be approved by a sales director, otherwise by any sales person, before the delivery can be triggered).

The figure Workflow for order SO005 shows the standard workflow for an order. You can show it from the GTK client starting with Sales Management ‣ Sales Order ‣ All Sales Order. Select an order, then go to the top menu Plugins ‣ Execute a plugin ‣ Print Workflow to show the menu below.

In the web client you can reach a workflow from the associated cross-company process (the process itself is reached by going to the sales document and then clicking the Process button above it), Chapter Process provides all of the information needed to create and modify technical workflows and cross-company processes.

Workflow for order SO005

Assigning roles

Users can be linked to several roles specifying their duties in certain phases of different workflows accompanying the various documents. For example, if a user has taken the role of services manager he takes on the task of approving holiday requests from his staff. So his role will be integrated in the holiday request workflow.

Role definition is done in Administration ‣ Users ‣ Roles Structure ‣ Roles, the same way you define groups, except that roles can be hierarchical: a parent role has the same influence as all of its child roles (for example, the sales director would be able to do all of the things that have been defined for a sales person, as well as anything defined specifically for the sales director group, if the sales director has been made a parent of the sales group).

Once the roles have been defined, you can add them into the workflow transitions using the Role field. This means that users who have the required role can make the transitions in the workflow, which enable them to pass from one activity to another (for example confirming an order or an invoice).