Automating Business Processes with Custom JD Edwards Workflows 

What is a Custom Workflow? Is it Worth it?

In technical terms, a workflow is defined as follows:

Breaking down and ultimately automating a business process composed of connected activities that complete a particular task can be achieved through implementation of workflows. In other words, workflows simplify automation of business processes.

To get an idea of the benefits of implementing such a solution, it is important to understand the issues that the client faced. The HR department would have to address each request for any new hire or payroll status change manually. Additionally, this required thorough documentation, traceability for the status as well as taking valuable time and effort from important resources. Implementing the solution discussed below allowed the client to experience the following benefits:

• Optimal Productivity and Use of HR Department Resources
• Process Transparency
• Decreased Business Reaction Time (i.e. Approval Times now faster)
• Improved Accountability
• Minimal Manual Intervention
• Easy Traceability

The Requirement & Challenges

The Human Resources department maintained all requests for new hiring & payroll status changes manually. The following list details the main requirements the solution had to address.

• The hiring process must be based on the current approval process, which is based on the Employee/Supervisor relationship that is maintained dynamically in JD Edwards.
• All approvals must go through each level that is defined in the hierarchy.
• Not all the supervisors have the approval authority in the hierarchy.
• All requests (from both the different processes) should be available in a centralized location for supervisors to quickly address the requests (i.e. Payroll Status Change approval screen).

Challenges

• The Standard “Payroll Status Change” Workflow had to be adjusted so that the requests would only go to supervisors who had approval authority.
• Newer JDE Workflow Tools do not directly support a dynamic hierarchy based on Employee/Supervisor relationship, which was a requirement in this case.
• New JDE Workflow Tools supports distribution lists based on an organization hierarchy, however it is not based on Employee/Supervisor relationship. An additional step was required to synchronize the organizational structure with the Employee/Supervisor relationship.
• Various supervisors fall in to different hierarchies, which meant multiple distribution lists would need to be maintained. This ruled out this as a solution, which we learned the hard way.
• Other technical challenges, such as use of deprecated system functions, stability issues with Workflow Modular (workflow design tool), and interface complexity with the payroll status changes approvals.
• During the initial hiring process, a new employee does not have a defined hierarchy so extra steps are required to identify this based on requesting manager’s existing hierarchy so that going forward; their approval process will follow the new workflow.

The Custom Workflow Solution

After many hours of research, testing and ultimately hair loss, we were finally able to identify a viable solution. Essentially, a new custom JDE workflow was developed to address the requirements mentioned above.

The solution ultimately eases the HR department hiring process (also known as the requisition process). Since there are already standard JDE Workflows that use the Employee/Supervisor relationship for the approval process, we customized the solution based on these existing Workflows.

It gives the ability to use the deprecated functionality (which is not available in the new toolset as mentioned in sections above). Finally, other necessary components (e.g. business functions, business and transition rules, etc.) were developed ground up and configured to sync with the modified design.

Lessons Learned

The truth is that I have not worked on Workflows for a long time (XE days). This task certainly proved to be a challenge and as with any challenge, I learned a lot from my experience.

• Since XE, workflow tools have changed immensely over the years, which required a learning curve before I could determine and develop a viable solution.
• The newer JDE workflow tools do not directly support a dynamic hierarchy based on Employee/Supervisor relationship which added complexity to the work which I did not initially expect.
• The newer changes in workflow tools do not provide the functionality that was needed.
• We figured out how to make use of the standard workflow as a template to build on (uses the dynamic hierarchy based on Employee/Supervisor relationship) to develop the new and customized Workflows.

Keep Reading: Build your own JD Edwards workflow