Developing Process Flows

Aptify's Process Pipeline infrastructure provides an organization with the ability to define and modify business logic and process flow through the use of an intuitive graphical user interface. All functionality within Aptify's business applications are delivered in the form of logical components, which are combined into process flows and associated with events throughout the application. The Aptify Process Pipeline architecture provides the ability to define extremely granular components that perform very specific actions. These components are then combined to form complete process flows. Administrators with knowledge of the system may make these process flow modifications through the use of a graphical user interface rather than by writing code.

For information on Aptify's Process Pipeline infrastructure and how to create Process Flows and Event Handlers, see Managing Process Pipelines).

This topic describes how to design a process flow by providing step-by-step instructions for how one of the Process Flows included with the sample application was created.

The sample application provides three sample process flow and events:

• Service Ticket Generation Process Flow (fired BeforeCommitTransaction for Rental Agreements): This four-step process flow uses a combination of Process Flow Step Rules and Components to automatically generate Service Tickets for vehicles that are either damaged or require scheduled maintenance during the check-in process.
• Service Ticket Approval Alert Process Flow (fired BeforeCommitTransaction for Service Tickets): This two-step process flow uses a Rule to identify if a Service Ticket is being saved as Completed, and if so, the process flow sends an e-mail notification to a manager that the vehicle is ready for release back to the fleet, pending approval.
• Vehicle Status Updater Process Flow (fired AfterSave for Service Tickets): This two-step process flow automatically updates a vehicle's status when it enters or exits the service department. This is the functionality that is also demonstrated in the Service Ticket entity object (the source code for this object is included with the sample application but is not attached to the Service Ticket entity).

See About the Business Process Design for the Sample Application for a description of each of these process flows, including flowcharts. All three Process Flows are available for review in the sample application and are fully functional.

The remainder of this topic describes the process followed to create the Service Ticket Generation process flow and Event Handler (see Creating the Service Ticket Generation Process Pipeline).