Why do you allow role assignment on both the Form and Flow in the first place?

October 5, 2011 by Leave a Comment

One of our customers asked the question above. Roles are available both in forms (for Sections and Tabs) and in flows (for any activity). What’s the difference and when would you use one vs the other?

Roles in a Form

 

As the image shows, you can select one or more roles in the Security Tab in the Properties panel for a Section or a Tab. When a role is assigned to a Section/Tab, the controls therein are only visible to logged in users who have that role. This allows you to create forms that look different depending on who is using them. For example, I’m sure you’ve come across a paper form with an “Office Use Only” or “To be filled by HR” section. On a Leave Approval form, there’s probably a Section for manager approval. Why show it if you’re not a manager?

Roles in a Flow

In a workflow, roles play a different part. They control who performs a step (activity) in the workflow. In the Leave Approval workflow above, if you are logged in as a user with role ‘Employee’, you will see the first step in the workflow. When you click to continue, frevvo notices that the second step has roles ‘HR’ and ‘Manager’. If you do not belong to one of those roles, the workflow will be forwarded to users in those roles and you will not be able to continue. It’s like an employee filling out a Leave Application either on paper or a Word document and then walking it over or e-mailing the Word doc to the manager.

Combine the two

Take a look at the Leave Approval workflow tutorial. As explained above the steps in the workflow have roles which control who performs the step. But the form used in the workflow also uses the same roles for a different purpose. In the first step (logged in as Employee), I will only see the Employee section. In the second step (logged in as a Manager), I will also see the Manager Approval section even though it’s the same form and the same workflow.

So, put the two together and you have something that’s flexible and powerful enough to provide the functionality you need yet easy to maintain since there’s just one form (used multiple times) and one workflow.

 

Filed under Confluence Workflows, Forms, Workflows Tagged with , , , , ,

Try a Leave Approval Workflow

October 4, 2011 by Leave a Comment

We’ve noticed that many customers are using frevvo for HR-related workflows. Using frevvo’s brand new Spaces, I’ve created a short demo of a simple Leave Approval workflow so you can easily try it out and get a flavor for using frevvo workflows.

Try the demo

Want to learn more:

Filed under Confluence Workflows, Workflows

Leave Approval Workflow: Confluence + Google Apps

May 31, 2011 by 2 Comments

Our customers have been creating all kinds of interesting workflows and we’ve added new features to Live Forms to handle several of the scenarios we’ve seen. A common example is a Leave Approval (Vacation Request) workflow that goes from employee to her specific manager and then on to HR for approval. Every organization irrespective of size has to deal with Leave Approvals and, by and large, it’s a paper- or email-based process that is slow, costly and inefficient.

With Live Forms, you can easily automate this workflow. You can deploy it online, for example, in Confluence and you can save the results in your HR system, document management system or even online to Google Apps.

It’s very easy to do with Live Forms. Check out this 4 min video:


Filed under Confluence, Confluence Workflows, Google Apps, Workflows Tagged with , , , , , , , ,

How to process form/workflow data

April 28, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Now that you’ve created your form or workflow, what are the various things you can do when it is submitted? With frevvo, there are many many flexible options. You can simply view your submissions online or send them to your own web server for processing or use the frevvo API to perform detailed post-processing of submission data. We’ve documented this in this new Tutorial on processing form data.

We’ll keep updating this as required but if you want to see all the options available to you, check it out.

Filed under Confluence Forms, Confluence Workflows, Forms, Workflows Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Customers are creating all kinds of interesting workflows

April 20, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Now that we’ve had workflows out there for several months, customers have been creating all kinds of interesting workflows. We’ve even added some new capabilities to the product to accommodate the feedback we’ve been getting. With frevvo flows, you can quickly and easily create:

  • Multi-page forms with a navigation toolbar e.g. an application with multiple steps.
  • Simple, role-based approval workflows e.g. a Nurse refers a patient, any Doctor must approve.
  • Specific-user-based approval workflows e.g. an Employee requests vacation, a specific Manager must approve.
  • Dynamic roles where the role for the next step is determined at runtime e.g. a Purchase Order where the approval must be performed by a Manager if the amount is less than $1000 and a Supervisor otherwise.
  • Looping between multiple users in a role e.g.  an Issue Tracking workflow where an Issue entered by an employee might have multiple actions by support staff before the issue is resolved.
  • Ad-hoc workflows where a step is passed between arbitrary users e.g. a Proposal review where the second Review step is performed by a number of users in any ad-hoc order.
  • Rejecting a step and sending it back to the original user e.g. an Expense Approval workflow where the approving manager may decide to send the workflow back to the original employee for corrections.
Want to learn more. Check out the documentation. It contains links to videos, step-by-step Tutorials and more.

Filed under Confluence Workflows, Workflows

Confluence Video Playlist

April 8, 2011 by Leave a Comment

We’re now using a YouTube video playlist to make it easy to learn about using frevvo to create forms and workflows in Confluence. In less than 15 minutes, you will see how to create forms, view submissions in Confluence, download to Excel, store form data in Confluence pages, and create approval workflows with digital signatures in Confluence.

http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=CA307F3C13C3E624

Filed under Confluence, Confluence Forms, Confluence Workflows

SaaS frevvo with Confluence

February 16, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Phew! We’ve finally worked out most of the kinks of using hosted frevvo (SaaS server) with Confluence. It’s cool: just install the plugin, point it at frevvo’s SaaS service and Go!! No need to install or configure. You can use HTTPS for security, create/update/merge to Confluence pages even if your Confluence is safely behind your firewall, and run workflows. You can even setup Confluence with Active Directory authentication and connect it to the SaaS service.

Here is an updated video of the setup (note that it’s still a test server and this is not production-ready):

Filed under Confluence, Confluence Forms, Confluence Workflows Tagged with , , , , ,

Using SaaS frevvo with Confluence

February 1, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Several prospects have asked us about evaluating frevvo Live Forms for Confluence without the hassle of installing a frevvo server. Well, we’re working on making this available in production but a test service is available now.

  1. Sign up for a free account
  2. Activate your account
  3. Download and install the plugin
  4. Configure it to connect to frevvo using the account you just created.

This 3 min video shows you how (strongly recommend you watch in HD 720p):

Filed under Confluence, Confluence Forms, Confluence Workflows Tagged with , , ,

Collect data on a Confluence page

February 1, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Our customers use Live Forms for Confluence for surveys, event registrations etc. where the result data is downloaded to MS Excel. But sometimes, people want to do more. They want to format the results as a table and add a graph, display the results in specific ways etc.

Confluence and its rich set of plugins is the ideal platform for this and with frevvo Live Forms you can now easily create forms [and even workflows] and collect submissions on a Confluence page. Then, use arbitrary macros to create tables, charts, Tab views etc.

Watch a 3.5 min video below.

Filed under Confluence, Confluence Forms, Confluence Workflows, Excel, Forms Tagged with , , , ,

Creating/Updating Confluence pages

February 1, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Customers have long inquired about the ability to create Confluence pages from frevvo forms for structured content. For example, a Client dashboard or Customer support application in Confluence.

Let’s say you want to create a Client dashboard with a Confluence page for each client. Either clients themselves or internal employees can easily create/update their information using the wiki editor. The problem is that it’s hard to keep the pages consistent since the wiki editor lets people create free-format pages. That’s where frevvo comes in.

Instead of creating/updating these pages via the wiki editor, clients and employees are presented with a form. The form enforces structure, business rules, validation etc. When the form is submitted, frevvo will generate a Confluence page for the client; the page can be named using data from the form (e.g. client name). frevvo can also generate an Edit link on the page. When clicked, it takes you back to the form pre-filled with the client data. You can edit the data and submit. frevvo will then update the client page with the updated data.

It’s really quite easy to do. You can see for yourself in the 4 min video below:

Filed under Confluence, Confluence Forms, Confluence Workflows, Forms, Workflows Tagged with , , , , , , , ,

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