Enhanced Bi-directional Linkage Between Workflows, Customer Care and Tickets

When you create a workflow you can establish a reference link to the specific customer or ticket the workflow is acting upon. This provides greater visibility between the respective applications than was supported by the Workflow tab in the Customer Care and Tickets InfoCenters.

• In the Workflow application, you can see the customer or ticket linked to a workflow instance.

• In Customer Care and Tickets, you can see the workflow instances linked to a specific customer or ticket, regardless of where the workflows were initiated (Customer Care/Tickets or Workflow).

Setting Up Reference Links in Workflow

There are two ways to establish the linkage between a workflow and it’s related customer or ticket. When you configure a Create Workflow action or manually start a workflow, you can select a link reference type of Customer or Ticket and specify the customer (using Customer ID) or ticket (using Ticket ID).

Create Workflow Action

The Create Workflow action provides fields for specifying link reference type and link reference ID.

For Link Reference Type, select Customer or Ticket, then enter the specific customer or ticket ID in the Link reference ID field.

Start Workflow Page

Similarly, when you start a workflow manually, the Start Workflow page lets you select a Link Reference Type. The field defaults to blank. If you select Customer or Ticket, the Link Reference ID field is displayed.

Support for SUB WORKFLOWS to Inherit Link Reference

When configuring a Splitter step on a Workflow definition, you can choose to have the sub-workflow inherit the link reference from the parent workflow. The setting defaults to checked (inherit).

Viewing Link References in Workflow

You can view link references in Workflow from the Workflow and Task Search pages or when viewing a specific instance.

Workflow Search

On the Workflow Search page you can select a Link Reference Type and/or enter a Link Reference ID. From the search results, click the preview button in the far right column to display details for a specific workflow including the linked customer or ticket.

Task Search

Link Reference Type and Link Reference ID have also been added as search parameters on the Task Search page.

You can enter values in either or both of these fields to search by a specific linked object or type of object. The Link Reference Type drop down provides two options: Customer and Ticket. This lets you search for workflow tasks linked to a specific ticket or customer when used in combination with the Link Reference ID, or by selecting a type and leaving the link reference ID blank, all tasks associated to the selected link reference type will be returned.

Note:

Environments on a version of CostGuard lower than 20.6 will not display the new search parameters.

Workflow Instance

Workflow instances that are linked to an object will display the link reference information in the gray bar when viewing the instance.

Viewing Link References in Customer Care and Tickets

There are no visual changes to Customer Care and Tickets. The underlying structure for linking a workflow to a customer or ticket now uses the new Link Reference Type and ID fields in Workflow, and the linkage is now bi-directional such that workflows displayed on a customer or ticket are also linked to that customer or ticket in the Workflow application.

The Start Workflow capability in Customer Care and Tickets will link the workflow instance to the customer/ticket using the Workflow Link Reference fields, and the workflow instance will be listed on the Workflow tab in the InfoCenter. Additionally, any workflows that are initiated from Workflow, either from the Create Workflow action or manually started, that are linked to a customer/ticket will also be displayed on the Workflow tab. So regardless of how the workflow was initiated, the linking can be seen in both modules.

Note:

Searching in Workflow for workflows associated to a specific customer or ticket will show the same workflow instances as listed in the InfoCenter.