Completing workflow requests

As a workflow participant, you can receive three types of requests: Get approval, Assign manual task, and Request information. Each of these actions temporarily suspend the workflow's progress while it waits for your response. Once your response is received, the workflow continues toward completion.

Options for completing requests

You receive notification of a request via an e-mail message automatically generated by a workflow, or by logging on to the Web application and checking your To do list. You can complete your requests by clicking the applicable icons in the body of the e-mail message, or by logging on to the Web application and clicking the icons in the To do list. Once you have completed a task, it disappears from your To do list. In the email message, if you or another user tries to complete a request that has already been completed, a message appears, indicating that a response for this task has already been saved or that the request has already been completed by someone else.

Note:
• To enable users to complete tasks in the Web application and from their e-mail client, the user's browser security settings need to be set to include the LPM server as a trusted domain.
• Users are required to authenticate to the LPM server when opening Process Manager-generated e-mail notifications and requests. To allow the user to open these messages, anonymous access needs to be enabled in the Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager on the LPM core server. The folder that needs to be enabled is Web Sites\Default Web Site\LANDesk.Workflow.Web\Images. Also, the e-mail client needs to be set to allow display of graphic images sent from the LPM server.

Get approval

An approval request is when you receive a request to authorize a purchase, approve a new hire, or another action in which your approval is required. You can approve, approve with conditions, or deny. If you select the approve with conditions option, a text box is provided in which you can specify any requirements or conditions for the approval.

Manual task

You may also receive a request to complete some form of physical action or other task, such as installing a new workstation, rebooting a server, etc. To complete this task, you can select mark the task as completed or I cannot complete this action. If you mark the task as completed, you are asked to indicate how long it took to complete the task. If you select I cannot complete this action, you are asked to include a reason why you cannot complete it.

Request for information

The third type of request is when you receive an e-mail request to fill out information in an attached web form (InfoPath, etc.). When you finish filling out the form and submit it, the data you provide populates the designated fields in the workflow.

ID numbers

 To complete your to do items, or to view reports and audit histories, it is helpful to note and understand two reference numbers.

Request ID: Process Manager assigns a Request ID to each workflow instance. The Request ID is a five-digit number that is automatically generated by the system; for example, 46000, 46001, 46002, etc. It is helpful to note this number whenever you want to look up or take action on a particular workflow instance. Each workflow instance will have a unique Request ID; all actions contained within the workflow are referenced using this number.

External system ID: this is the unique identifier that was assigned at the time the workflow's event listener was created. See "Mappings" in the Event Listeners topic in the Process Manager Help for more information.

These two numbers are used in reports and workflow histories as reference points to identify specific workflow instances, when they were started, the actions associated with them, and to maintain a link to the external application or database with which the workflow needs to interact. For more information on reports and histories, see "Web console".

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