ARCHIBUS workflow rules span across all modules. They provide the individual steps and services — such as email notification, data update, and status update — that an organization can tie together to reflect a particular workflow in their organization. For example, a workflow for managing requested maintenance issues may have workflow rules for notifying a requestor that maintenance work has been rejected and for changing work request status. ARCHIBUS workflow rules speed communication flow between work groups, reduce administrative errors, eliminate follow-up communication, document how a job is executed, and ensure consistency among an organization’s departments and sites. The rules can be modified to suit an organization’s particular needs, accelerate the organization’s processes, and enforce an organization’s procedures and business rules Typically, two type of ARCHIBUS workflow rules are used:
- Message rule. This kind of rule is run in response to a user action (such as clicking a button on a form), which creates an XML action message that the client workstation submits to the server.
- Scheduled rule. This kind of rule is run on a pre-determined interval (every hour, every Monday and Tuesday at 1:00 am, etc.). It is run by the application itself. Scheduled rules run repeat reminders, data transfers, benchmark calculations, and other actions that should be performed at specified intervals. Managers can activate edit, activate, and deactivate workflow rules using the System Administration/ARCHIBUS System Administration/Add-In Manager tasks. An example of an ARCHIBUS workflow option is an SLA, or Service Level Agreement. The integration of workflows called SLAs and role-based security ensures customers get the level of service defined by SLA parameters. SLAs are used in On Demand, Preventive Maintenance, and Service Desk in the following ways:
- Allow work requests to take advantage of SLAs that define work team obligations, service windows, and performance measurements
- Measure response and completion times to detect performance issues and provide timely information for continuous process improvement
- Provide intelligent SLA selection that assigns requests based on need type, level of authorization, expertise, and resources required to satisfy the request
- Create automated routing that forwards requests for required approvals and, based on the SLA, accelerates urgent requests to either internal or external work teams within seconds of submission. When defining a Service Level Agreement (SLA), you define what actions happen when the work has specific statuses. For example, what should happen when the work is Requested, Approved, Issued, Completed, and Closed? You can specify whether the work requires approval, whether it is dispatched to a supervisor, work team, or dispatcher, when and to whom notifications should be sent, if escalations are required, and whether estimation or scheduling are required. Users can also add the actions that should occur for Rejected, Stopped, or Canceled work. Across all modules, notifications and approvals can be added at any point in your process. To ensure that recurring events are completed on-time and not missed, email notifications for events can be sent using notification templates. Notification templates specify the message, recipients, and triggering conditions that determine when the email is sent. Defining notification templates ensures that the appropriate notifications are sent at critical points to all stakeholders. Alerts and notifications can also be set up for users that have a metric that needs to be managed day by day. For instance, an operations manager may wish to be informed of the number of new work requests or an asset manager may need to know what assets require disposal. ARCHIBUS will send tailored notifications about key alerts so that users will always be apprised of critical items even if users are not logging into ARCHIBUS. For instance, a compliance manager may wish that all “Regulatory Actions: Due This Week” are sent to them in an email on Monday. The email can contain links to ARCHIBUS views, such as the Compliance Violation view, so that you can immediately drill into the details you need to resolve the issue. Safety incident Reports, work request escalations, low-inventory warnings, project budgets, strategic targets — all can send proactive notifications. Notifications can be established based on high or low warning limit, high or low critical limit, or targeted report limits. Users can create a notification message with a template that inserts the metric values, fine tunes the recipient list, and creates multiple types of notifications based on the same metric or alert. Users have the same flexibility to define approvals. Approvals are defined using the System Administrator define approval task. Approvals can be established across all modules for the events listed, but not limited to:
- Space requests
- Approve chargeback costs
- Project approvals
- Capital budget approvals
- Review and approve bills
- Approval for any scheduled cost
- Approving invoices from vendors
- Approving bids
- Approving commissioning specifications
- Approving work requests
- Approvals for adding or editing actions for approved projects
- Approve or reject transactions
- Approve or reject reservations
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