Planning and Deploying Advanced Workflows

Before you start building an advanced workflow in an application or questionnaire, plan out your workflow in advance. Planning ahead helps you avoid performance challenges in Advanced Workflow.

If you are planning an update of an existing advanced workflow, see Bulk Update Jobs.

Overall deployment process

It is recommended that you approach creating and deploying advanced workflows in the phases described in the following table.

Phase	Location	Steps
Develop	Development environment	Plan your advanced workflow process. See the following sections in this topic. Build the workflow in the application or questionnaire. See Building Advanced Workflows.
Test	Development environment	In the application or questionnaire, create several test records, move them through the steps of the workflow, and verify that each action you take in the workflow has the intended result. You can use the Job Troubleshooting tool to see what happens to each job as it progresses through the workflow. For more information on job states and resolving errors, see Troubleshooting Advanced Workflows. Package the application or questionnaire. See Creating Packages.
Deploy	Production environment	Install the package. See Installing Packages. Review and activate the workflow. See Activating and Deactivating Advanced Workflows. Educate your end users on which steps of the workflow they are responsible for.

Plan your advanced workflow (outside of Archer)

Before you start building an advanced workflow in an application or questionnaire, it is recommended that you first plan out the following elements:

Note: You may want to create a swimlane diagram or whiteboard your process.

1. The steps in your process and the nodes you need accomplish those steps.
2. The transitions between steps.
3. The users and groups who will be involved in the process and what level of access they require for different steps.
4. For notifications that you plan to send, who should receive the notifications and what content the notification should contain.
5. For nodes that can use custom layouts, what content you want your users to see.

Prepare prerequisite elements in Archer

1. Create any on-demand notifications templates that your workflow requires.
2. (Optional) Create any custom layouts that you need for User Action or Wait for Content Update nodes.

   If your custom layouts are similar to your default layout, you may find it easier to copy the default layout and modify the copy.

   Note: In order to create additional layouts, you must first turn on advanced workflow in the application or questionnaire. Go to the Advanced Workflow tab and click here to create a new workflow.

Advanced workflow performance best practices

Advanced Workflow performance, in the designer and during packaging and content processing, is a function of the number of nodes, transitions, and unique paths through the workflow. As each of these numbers increase, performance decreases. When you design or implement Advanced Workflow, test these functions before you transfer the workflow to production.

Complicated workflows configured with hundreds of nodes or transitions may raise performance issues, especially in production environments, due to the large quantities of data involved. This also makes them harder to test. For example, each time you add a User Action node with 2 transitions passing out of the node, the number of tests requires essentially doubles. Typically, when applications are configured with hundreds of fields and workflow nodes, those applications may be doing the combined work of several applications, to reduce the number of on-demand applications implemented. Archer recommends discussing these types of applications with your account representative to determine performance requirements.

A processing cost is incurred for every record enrolled in workflow. Archer recommends to design workflows that pass content quickly through the end of the workflow, without holding content in the workflow for too long. Content should be expected to stay in the workflow for days or weeks, rather than months or years. Avoid repeatedly recycling content that has already exited the workflow.