The workflow inbox can be seen as the personal control center for agents (users). An inbox which looks a lot like an email inbox, with work items that can result in actual actions. The items listed in the end users workflow inbox can also be listed in the inbox of other users...
When the business workspace (workflow inbox) is inspected, several grouping options are available. Here's how these options can be used: the following grouping options are available in the user inbox:
- Grouped according to task
Where the task name displayed as grouping-subject. This field can be found on the tast, directly under the abbreviation. It's generally a good idea to set up a naming convention for this name. The first few characters should indicate the overall subject the task is about, which will make the grouping option "Grouped according to task" very useful. E.g. when the task is about a Purchase Order flow, prefix the Name of the task with "PO:"...
How to assign substitutes for workfow and how to display work items of another user in your inbox. Reserving and Replacing work items is also covered here. Workflow revolves around the user inbox and users can go celebrate their vacation or simply get a flu. To cater for inboxes that get lost, Workflow has a thing called Substitutes.
There are 2 types of substitutes:
- active substitutes (for absence due to vacation) - all work items are visible in the inbox of the other user automatically
- passive substitutes (for absence due to illness) - work items are visible in the inbox of the other user on request
Every end user can set up automatic forwarding for themselves, which will produce an e-mail for every wirk item (or notification) addressed to the end user. Handy feature, you may say, but do bear in mind the following: whenever a notification is issued without receivers, R/3 assumes that all users on the system will be agents, so at least the person the needs to be addressed will get it. Ergo: say 50 users have automatic forwarding active and a notification is issued without receivers, the system will create 50 e-mails and send them out, just for the one notification. And of course, if one such notification slips through, Murply's law dictates that there may well be hundreds. Producing an e-mail is resource consuming and thus the system could get into serious trouble...
Documents can be attached to a workflow work item from the end-user inbox. This also applies to e.g. a Word document or a scan of the invoice that is being questioned in the workflow. This article is just to refer to business object SOFM method GETATTACHMENTS which will pick up these attachments for a given work item ID.
You can set up a work item deadline, e.g. a number of days the end user is allowed to look at the workitem without actioning it. This and other forms of notifcations are briefly explained here...
Notifications
Every work item has a tab for "Notification" which allows sending or issueing a notification message to the agent (or agents) given. This can be very useful if someone needs to track a process. Do make sure these settings don't flood the inbox of the receiver, if too many of these notifications are issued, they fully automatically turn into a pain in the a** to your end user...