Workflow Self Study Notes Part 2 (Theory) - Agents

[Former Member]

There are mainly 3 groups of Agents:

• Possible Agents
• Responsible Agents
• Excluded Agents

Apart from these 3 groups, there are 2 other categories of agents:

• Recipients
• Actual Agents

Possible Agents

• These are people who can execute a task.

• Defined in the "Task" level
• Best practice to assign possible agents, is to sync with Security Roles

• A task can be marked as "General Task" to allow anyone to execute the work item.

• There are different ways to assign possible agents.
  • For SAP provided workflows, we can assign possible agents using IMG.
  • When we are displaying a task, we can use the following menu path
    • Additional data --> Agent assignment --> Maintain
    • The transaction is PFTC_DIS.
  • From task profile section of organization plan
  • From profile generator (Roll Maintenance);  Transaction PFCG
  • From workflow builder during step definition.

Responsible Agents

• Responsible agents are people who you want to execute a particular work item.

• Responsible agents are usually assigned in workflow step level, but can also be assigned at the task level via default agent determination rules
• Usually responsible agents are determined during runtime using two main ways
  • Expressions
    • In expressions, the data needed for agent determination is stored in workflow containers, which later is used in computations and agent is determined based on container values.
  • Rules
    • In rules, agents are determined dynamically when work items are created.
    • We can bind data from workflow to the rules to provide data for agent determination computations.

• For a work item to be forwarded to a responsible agent, the agent should also be a possible agent.

Excluded Agents

• Excluded agents are people who should not receive the work item for execution
• Excluded agents are always assigned by an expression to the workflow step
• Typically we put all excluded agents in a multi-line container in the workflow container, and use an expression to assign the list of excluded agents to a particular step.

Recipients

• Recipients are agents who receive a work item.
• Recipients are
  • Possible Agents
  • Responsible Agents
  • Are Not Part of Excluded Agents
• If there are no possible agents, then nobody will receive the work item.
• If no responsible agents are determined, the system checks to see if any default agents are defined in the task level.
• Recipients can forward work items to another agent. Whether or not the recipient can forward the work item is determined by the attribute of task.
  • General Task
    • Work item can be forwarded to anyone and executed by anybody
  • General Forwarding
    • Work item can be forwarded to any user.
  • No General Forwarding
    • Work item can only be forwarded to possible agents.
  • No Forwarding
    • Work item cannot be forwarded.

Actual Agent

• Actual agent is the agent that is currently processing a work item or the user who has last processed a work item.

Assigning Multiple Agents to Work Items

• Many agents can be assigned to a single work item.
• The work item shows up in all agents inbox, and disappears from everyone else when one agent reserves or executes a work item.

• Sometimes we need every agent to make an active decision from particular process. To do this, we can create one work item per agent.

Deadline and Notification Agents

Deadline Agents

• Deadline agents are people who receive work item when a deadline has exceeded for a work item
• These agents are entered in the deadline Of workflow step.

Notification Agents

• Notification agents are people who are notified when a work item is completed.
• Usually entered in notification tab of workflow step.

Agent assignment using organizational structure

• Every workflow agent must have a userid.
• Assigning userid directly for task may be very high maintenance.
• Organizational plan helps in simplifying this issue.
• Every SAP application server comes with basic organizational plan

Basic organization Plan

Organizational Units

• Represents a group of people such as 18, section, Department, work area, lab, help desk, or shared service Centre.

Jobs

• A job described functional role within the organization.

Positions

• Position represents a headcount placement.

Users

• Users is the actual userid of a person.

• Workflow task can be linked to one or more Organization units, positions, jobs, or users.

Extended Organization Plan

• SAP my HR comes with extended organization plan
• Extended organizational plan includes personal numbers
  • A person represents a PERNR
  • a person may be assigned to one or more positions.
  • A user is assigned to a person by setting up info type 105 (Communication)
• From workflow perspective, extended organizational plan has following benefits
  • Much more data in organizational plan to help make decisions.
  • "Evaluation paths" can be custom built and used as rules to find organization objects.

Reassign Work Items from One Agent to Another

• If a user changes job or position, existing work item may need reassignment.
• Typically, only served work item needs reassignment.
• We can find outstanding work items for the user using transaction : SWI5. This transaction should be run before removing the user
• We can find orphaned work items using transaction : SWI2_ADM1

Temporary Substitution of Agents

Sometimes will need to temporarily substituted the agent. This can be done in two ways:

• The HR substitute relationship A210

• User Substitution (Table: HRUS_D2)

The HR substitute relationship A210

• We create substitute for a position using A210 relation between position and substitute.
• All work items for that position are made available to the substitute.

User Substitution Using Table HRUS_D2

• This is usually maintained from user's inbox using menu path

   Inbox --> Settings --> Workflow Settings --> Maintain Substitutes

• We can also create entries directly using ABAP

Substitute itself can be of two types:

Active Substitutes

• In active substitution, work items are automatically forwarded or appear in the substitutes inbox.

Passive Substitute (also called adopt Substitute)

• Require the substitutes to explicitly choose to see original agents work item

Refreshing Organisational Plan an Environment

• The organisation plan is buffered for efficiency.
• Changing an organisation plan will not immediately be updated in the buffer, and hence can create confusion especially for workflows using the plan for agent determination.
• Typically buffer is refreshed at midnight.
• Alternatively, in development systems, we can trigger refreshing of buffer using transaction: SWU_OBUF
• It should be noted that the buffer afresh is a resource intensive process
• When writing your own programs for buffer afresh, following function modules can be handy:
  • RH_WF_OM_INDICES_TIMESTAMP_RFS
  • RH_TASK_INBOX_VIEW_REFRESH
  • RH_TASK_AGENTS_INDEX_REFRESH