Swan(sea) Song – personal research during my six years at Swansea ... and bey...
Low-Code Development Workflow Guide
1. Low-Code Development
Part 1: Workflow
Vadim Tabakman
Technical Evangelist
Nintex
Vadim.tabakman@nintex.com
@Vadim_tabakman
2. Vadim Tabakman
Nintex
Email :
Vadim.tabakman@nintex.com
Twitter : @Vadim_tabakman
LinkedIn : vadimtabakman
• Presales, Software Developer and Blogger
• 9 years at Nintex
• 18 years developing and designing software
• Past lives in development and IT security
10. A much
greater
chance of
success.
They’re often less
complex.
They train users how to think
about workflow solutions.
Benefits of automating everyday processes
1 2 3
11. Do more good.
Focus on your mission.
Get more done. Expand impact.
Expand scope. Work most on what
matters.
What happens when work flows?
19. Initial Failure as a Winning Strategy
• Create an initial workflow just to show how awful (or incomplete) a
process is.
• Only then can you change it.
37. If (x and y) then
do this
do that
End if
If (user is Bob) then
do this and that and the other thing
undo that
End if
If (x and y) then
do this
do that
End if
If (x and y) then
do this
do that
End if
If (user is Bob) then
do this and that and the other thing
undo that
End if
If (x and y) then
do this
do that
End if
38. If (x and y) then
do this
do that
End if
If (user is Bob) then
do this and that and the other thing
undo that
End if
If (x and y) then
do this
do that
End if
If (x and y) then
do this
do that
End if
If (user is Bob) then
do this and that and the other thing
undo that
End if
If (x and y) then
do this
do that
End if
39. If (x and y) then
do this
do that
End if
If (user is Bob) then
do this and that and the other thing
undo that
End if
If (x and y) then
do this
do that
End if
If (x and y) then
do this
do that
End if
If (user is Bob) then
do this and that and the other thing
undo that
End if
If (x and y) then
do this
do that
End if
40. If (x and y) then
do this
do that
End if
If (user is Bob) then
do this and that and the other thing
undo that
End if
If (x and y) then
do this
do that
End if
If (x and y) then
do this
do that
End if
If (user is Bob) then
do this and that and the other thing
undo that
End if
If (x and y) then
do this
do that
End if
41. Form-Only App Problems
• Logic either hidden or disconnected
• Security
• Complexity without code
60. One Form Per Step
• Content Submit (list item or form library)
• Workflow Start (manually-executed workflows only)
• Workflow Task
61.
62.
63.
64.
65.
66.
67.
68.
69.
70.
71. Why this is good
• Forms stay simple
• Forms are specific to tasks
• Workflow is simpler
• Data can live anywhere
• Easier to secure
• It doesn’t fight the platform
83. Who Understands All of This?
Start
Publisher
deploys to
public web
site
End
End
Author
Revis
es
Yes
No
Manage
r
Approv
es
Yes
No
Lawyer
Approv
es
Yes
No
We sometimes take it for granted that people know what workflow is. It turns out it the word can mean many things to different people and in different situations.
We’re here today to demystify the topic of workflow. To speak in clear, simple terms about what workflow is, how Nintex approaches it, and why it matters to you.
In the course of a person doing her-or-his job, in the course of a company’s day-to-day operations, things happen.
Decisions get made,
Directions, or instructions, are provided – and hopefully followed,
Content, data, and other assets are located, and…
Activities are conducted.
Workflow is all about preserving those decisions, instructions, locations, and so on… and reusing them over and over again.
If you figured out how to get something done last time, and it went well, you shouldn’t have to do that all over again next time.
Best of all, workflow is about looking at those best practices and improving them.
Finally, it’s about looking at all of these different things and organizing them so you can look across all of your processes. You have to work on many things at once, so you should be able to organize them in one place.
How about we give you some examples?
What kind of work do we want to make flow?
As you can see from those examples, workflow automation can and should affect any process—big or small—within your business.
And that’s a fundamental philosophical difference between how we at Nintex and other folks approach workflow automation.
To build the most efficient business possible, many organizations focus on processes like this. They go big and go straight to the most complex, most critical processes they can identify. More often than not, these require a tech-heavy solution that takes a lot of time, talent, and cost to develop and get right. In fact, by the time a process is perfected, the world can look a lot different and the process may need to change again.
Those are important. Nintex gets used for these kinds of processes. But it’s not ONLY used for these. It’s used AT LEAST AS MUCH for other things. Processes that most of the other guys simply ignore. They’re often – but not always – smaller in scale, and look more like this.
We believe every process and every person deserves the benefit of workflow automation, including so-called “simple” processes like these.
How about making sure safety inspections are easily made, that details aren’t forgotten, and that they get escalated if something’s a problem?
How about submitting expense reports and routing them to the right approvers – and making both steps painless?
How about having a second pair of eyes review a posting to a company’s Twitter account or website just to make sure nothing was accidentally stated in an embarrassing way?
There are obviously many more, too. We call these…
…Everyday processes.
They originate from anywhere in the organization.
They represent the lifeblood of procedures that make the company run.
Many people perceive them to be processes that distract from “real” work.
Because of this, they receive less attention to detail and they’re often where most mistakes are made.
Taken together, they add up to a significant amount of time and money.
And yet, they’re ignored, rarely considered worth the time of traditional business process optimization because they’re not considered “central.”
When you begin to better manage everyday routines, it adds up to more productivity, a stronger bottom line, happier people, and opportunities for teams to focus on more strategic and inspiring endeavors.
It’s a shame when they’re ignored, because
There’s a much greater chance of successfully automating them. There are fewer stakeholders, so no committee effects.
They’re often less complex, taken one at a time. This increases the chance of the person responsible for the process being actively involved in its automation, rather than it being farmed out to a developer and requiring a lot of explanation/communication in both directions.
They train users—and your entire business—how to think about workflow solutions, and provide excellent preparation for addressing more classical “core” or “elaborate” processes the organization faces.
But it’s not ONLY about ROI. When you tackle everyday processes, things happen:
You can get more done. In less time and with less hassle.
You can expand the impact of every team.
You can do more good.
You can focus on your mission.
You can expand around the corner or around the world.
You can work on the things that matter.
And that’s why we got into this business. We make automating workflow quick and easy, so you can do more of what you do best.
Fail first, fail quickly, fail forward
Consensus, Commitment, Scope
You get them after a screw-up or happy accident
You want this
Rarely is this considered in advance
Rarely does everyone agree
Ignored exceptions lead to bypass
When you model a workflow…
You inevitably reach a point where you need to ask a person to do something. A decision, some input, an acknowledgement, whatever.
This usually means the creation of…
…a SharePoint task.
That can require the user to remember to check task lists. And in SharePoint, that’s a lot of lists.
We can help:
DEMO:SHOW HOME PAGE WITH “MY TASKS” AND “MY WORKFLOWS” WEB PARTS – ONE PLACE TO CHECK
The SharePoint team liked that idea so much they copied it – in part – in 2013.
Now, that still requires the user to remember to monitor at least one list.
That’s tolerable for some people
For other people, we can send them reminders in email, for example. The can click on a link to get to the task.
There are bad and good experiences when that happens.
DEMO:
RETURN TO THE HOME PAGE AND TO THE “MY TASKS” WEB PART – LOGGED ON AS BRETTC
OPEN A LEAVE APPROVAL TASK AND SHOW TASK+LIST ITEMS MIXED IN ONE FORM
Providing this kind of thing shouldn’t be hard work – and it isn’t.
You get everything you need in one place, to reward you for that single click.
When a user gets a task…
…we can send them an alert.
That could be over email, but
It could also be using an instant message.
But sometimes the best user interface is no user interface, or no extra work at all.
How about we let the user complete the task without jumping around from app to app?
DEMO:
LAZY APPROVAL OVER EMAIL
LAZY APPROVAL OVER LYNC
The user didn’t have to come to us at all to do that. We brought the task to them.
Some users might not even be part of your organization. There’s elsewhere.
They’re in the cloud – or at least they’re not in your data center.
Being able to let people participate in processes everywhere is a big deal for us.
DEMO:
CREATE FORM AND PUBLISH TO NINTEX LIVE
INVITE THE AUDIENCE TO COMPLETE THE FORM
Sometimes it’s not a person you need, but a group,
and that group may be loosely defined.
Social media works this way quite often.
That’s no problem for us. We can assign work to a community.
DEMO:
REVIEW REQUEST HANDLED USING YAMMER
Let’s keep going with this idea of putting the work in the place the users are…
Nintex believes that work should follow the user, not the other way around.
If we send a task to the place the user works, the odds are better of it getting done, and getting done on time.
And there are many places users work. A lot of them are mobile.
Moreover, a lot of people would prefer not to have their inboxes cluttered with task assignments.
Even more people need to collect data in remote locations, and can’t depend on constant Internet access.
We address all of these issues by putting your work in you pocket using Nintex Mobile Apps
DEMO:
TOUR OF NINTEX MOBILE APPS
TASKS
REVIEWING ATTACHED DOCUMENT
SUBMITTING RESPONSE
NOTING THAT IT’S QUEUED
FORMS
NOTE GROUPING, ICONS
NOTE LOCATION, PHOTOS
DEMO:
RETURN TO FORM DESIGNER
SHOW THAT IT’S JUST ONE EXTRA CLICK TO DEVICE-ENABLE A FORM
Don’t just replace paperWORK
Replace paper THINKING
Don’t just replace paperWORK
Replace paper THINKING