Creating multi-user workflows in Confluence

Using frevvo for Confluence, you can automate this entire workflow so that it is completely electronic in Confluence.

Consider a Vacation Request workflow. An employee wants to request vacation and fills out the appropriate portion of a paper form. The form is then handed over to a manager who must approve the vacation request, sign the form, notify the employee and file the paper form and/or notify HR.

The steps are as shown in the figure above:

1. An employee goes to a Confluence page that contains the workflow.
2. Since the employee does not belong to the 'manager' Confluence group, he will only see the relevant portion of the form.
3. The employee fills it in and clicks a Continue button.
4.  puts the task on the manager's task list, [optionally] notifies the manager by email and displays a confirmation message to the employee.
5. When the manager logs in, she visits a Confluence page that contains her task list.
6. The employee's vacation request will be displayed in the task list.
7. The manager performs the task. Since she belongs to the 'manager' Confluence group, she will see the manager-specific portions of the form. The employee-specific portions are automatically pre-filled.
8. She approves/rejects the vacation request, digitally signs the form and clicks Finish.
9. The employee is notified by email, and [optionally] a PDF image of the form is sent to the internal document management system or to Google Apps or saved in ' submissions repository.

Now, let's go through the process of building this workflow in Confluence.

Setup roles in 

This is a one-time setup that will have to be performed by an administrator.You only need to create roles in corresponding to the Confluence groups that you actually want to use in your workflow

View the multi-user workflows video to see details of creating these roles.

Assume that you have groups in Confluence called 'employee' and 'manager'. To create these roles in :

1. Login to  as the administrative user for the tenant that was created in Confluence.
2. Click the Manage link at the top right of the page.
3. On the page that is displayed, click the 'Manage Roles' link.
4. Click the  icon and in the form that is displayed type in the desired role. Make sure that the role names match exactly (including case).

Create the Vacation Request workflow

Here are some steps to follow to create the Vacation Request workflow:

1. Add a Confluence Page (say, Vacation Request Flow) and Add a workflow to it.
2. Use the Workflow Design Wizard to create two steps:
   1. Vacation Request - Create New Form - No Assignment
   2. Manager Approval - Approval Step - Assign to Role - Select the role 'manager'.
      

Customize Workflow Step Properties

1. Click the Vacation Request Step. On the Settings tab, set the Continue Label to 'Send to Manager'
2. Click the Manager Approval step, then the Assignment tab. Notice that the assignment was already set for you and some default text was added to the Task Notification email Subject and Message fields. Customize the Email Message to include a link to the Task List page in Confluence.
3. Click the Messages tab.

   1. Set the Task Info for the second step to 'Vacation Request for {FirstName} {LastName}'.

   2. Set the Pending Msg for the second step to 'Your request has been forwarded to your manager.'

Edit the Vacation Request form

Here are some steps to follow to create the Vacation Request form:

1. Go to Forms editing mode in the Guided Designer Navigation bar of your workflow.
   
2. Notice that the Workflow Design Wizard added several controls for you. You can edit them, remove them, and drag/drop new controls on the form as desired.
3. In the Figure below, we have

• • Relabeled the My Items section for the employee to 'Request.'
  • Added a date control 'Start Date' and a Number control 'Number of Days'
  • Deleted the wet signature control and enabled digital signatures for this Section by clicking on the Section header and then on the Security Tab in the properties pane to the left. In the Security Tab, Text/Signature image is selected, and the Must Sign box is checked.

Send an Email when the Workflow is Submitted

Next you can configure a Doc Action email to send when the workflow is completed.

1. Go to Settings editing mode in the Guided Designer navigation toolbar.
   
2. Click on the Document Actions tab and select Send Email.
3. In the wizard, for the To address select the Email control to generate a template. When the workflow is completed,  will send an email to the address that was entered in the Email control in the form.
4. Customize the Subject and Message for the email as desired.
5. Select the documents that you want to attach to the email. Minimally, select PDF from the 'Send Snapshot' drop down. Other options are described below:
   
   1. Send the data as a  PDF attachment or other image type using the Send Snapshot dropdown. The image type options are PDF, PNG or JPG.  Select the blank option from the dropdown to exclude this attachment in the email.
   2. Attach an XML data document using the Data checkbox. 
   3. Attachments uploaded to your form/workflow are included if the Attachments checkbox is checked. 
      

      1. If you have Pixel Perfect mapped PDFs (ex: W-4, I-9 etc…) associated with your forms/workflows, choose  the action you want to take from the Send Gen Forms control :

         •Check All to send all the Pixel Perfect PDFs. This is the default value.
         •Check None to send none of the PDFs
         •Check Select to display a list of all the PDFs associated with your form/workflow. Click the ones you want to be part of the submission. Hold down the Shift key then click the files in the list to select all PDFs or hold the control key and click specific PDFs.
6. Save the workflow.

Create the Task List page

To create the Task List page, 

1. Add a Confluence page (say, Task List) and Add Tasks to it.

Use the workflow

To use the Vacation request workflow:

1. Login to Confluence as an employee. 
2. Navigate to the 'Vacation Request Flow' Confluence page, to which you added the workflow.
3. You cannot see the Manager Approval section since you do not belong to the 'manager' Confluence group.
4. After signing the request, the 'Send to Manager' button will be enabled. Click the button to send the request to a manager. You can also send the request to a specific person rather than any user in the group manager 

1. Login to Confluence as a manager.
2. Navigate to the 'Task List' Confluence page, to which you added the task list above.
3. Click the  icon to perform this task.
4. The form will be displayed in its original Confluence page.