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Distributed Process
The distributed process design pattern is oriented towards the processing of information. The key element of the design is that the information stays in one place and there are views that are distributed across the work environment to the people involved in a process.
This sounds very similar to the master design pattern – the difference is the function. In the master design pattern, the focus is on information. In a distributed process type of solution, you want individuals to participate in a process. This may sound like an applet, but here the process is distributed across the work environment (aka many sites) as opposed to being centralized in a single site.
In practice, this design pattern often evolves out of an applet design. You start with a site using an applet design. You are processing something such as Work Orders. You require approvals from Finance, Sales, and Operations. The problem is that you are requiring individuals to navigate to this place to see the information and make approvals. Further, you need an alerting system, such as via email to alert them to each item. In this design, you would create displays where the people work or where their role works. They would then be able to see and act on the items in the process.
In addition, they would be able to have multiple views of different processes together in a single display configured for them. Thus, the user could have one dashboard with views of the 10 processes that they are involved in appearing in one display. This takes you into the Personal Pattern.
Work Order Approval Process (Distributed Approvals)
The Work Order Approval process in Breeze was designed as a self–contained application using the Applet pattern. The screenshot below shows the Work Order Approval solution. It has a number of tabs for managing the process.
However, the reality is that people do not necessarily go to this site to do their work. Imagine that in our case, the Executives were the worst offenders. Accordingly, what you do is snap off the Approval Active Display from the application and put it where the users works in order to make it more convenient. Below is the Work Order Approval Active Display that has been snapped into the Executive Dashboard.
The Executive can see the Work Orders in there dashboard and choose to Approve or Reject them, and make a comment, without having to leave their dashboard.
CorasWorks supports this portability of displays. The displays also have actions for items such as approvals. These are centrally configured, thus, you can put the displays wherever they are most convenient. The users just take their action from where they are. You can centrally change the action, for instance, to add an email notification, and the actions within the distributed displays will be change accordingly.
Click here to access the Work Order Approval display for Executives in the Work Order solution.
Click here to access the Work Order Approval approval display in the Executive Dashboard.
Help Desk Self–Service (Distributed Self–Service)
A similar design is addressed as part of our Help Desk application. This application is also an Applet. All of the work happens within the Help Desk. This initially included a self-service display for end-users as shown below. This is the display where the end-users enter their Help Desk requests and see the status of them.
Initially, this display was in the Help Desk solution. It didn’t work. End–users don’t want to have to navigate somewhere to enter a request or to check the status.
So instead, they just emailed the Help Desk people and called them. Our Help Desk people became data entry clerks. Further, the Help Desk people don’t want the users inside the application.
So, we just snapped off the Help Desk Self-Service display and distributed it. One place we put it was in the Executive dashboard. We also put it on the Global Workplace Menu under Workplace Tasks.
Thus, no matter where the user is in the workplace, they can see go here to enter a request and see the status. Everyone is now happy.
Click here to access the IT Help Desk.
Click here to access see the Help Desk Self-Service display in the Executive Dashboard.
Click here to go to the Breeze Portal. Then, select Workplace Tasks from the Workplace menu (top menu).
Vacation Approval Process (Distributed Chained Processes)
The two examples above show how you can distribute a process through the portability of CorasWorks components. This design pattern can be extended to link two processes together. You end up distributed information, in real time, and thus, having interlinked distributed processes. In this example, we have two interlocking processes for Departmental Vacation Approval and HR Payroll Adjustments. These are depicted below.
In each department there is a Vacation Approval process. It is self–contained in an Applet. There are requests, approvals, and various management tasks. When the vacation is approved, the status is changed to “02-Approved”. The approved vacation request then appears in the HR Administrators dashboard as shown below. They then use their actions to process the request and input the payroll adjustment.
Click here to access the Vacation Approval site for the Operations Department.
Click here to access the Vacation Approval site for the Product and Services Departments.
Click here to access the HR Administrator dashboard where the overall organizations Vacation Approval activities are tracked and documented and where the HR Payroll Adjustment process occurs.
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