Cloud Pak for Business Automation

 View Only

Leveraging Exception Handling and Request Approval Template for IBM Business Automation Application Designer and other platform's capabilities to drive efficiency across your business

By Walfrey Ng posted Mon October 26, 2020 11:59 PM

  

IBM Business Automation Application Designer is a low-code tool in IBM Business Automation Studio that enables business users to build business user interfaces, called applications, that integrate the capabilities from the platform.  To allow business users to quickly and easily build an application, in 20.0.2 June 2020 release, we have delivered 3 sample templates (Onboarding Application template, Exception Handling template; Request Approval template) which can be used as predefined starting points to create automation applications that suit your business needs. 

In the previous blog, we talked about how to use the Onboarding Application template to build an application that will streamline your onboarding process.  We would like to use this blog to talk about how you can use the other 2 templates, the Exception Handling template and the Request Approval template, to build an application that will streamline your process by potentially leveraging various Cloud Pak for Automation offerings



Page Flow for Exception Handling template

Above is the page flow for the Exception Handling template.  There are 2 main pages: (a) Home Search page and (b) Request Details page.   To allow the application templates to be executable even if not all the platform's capabilities are available, sample data are used to illustrate how the application can be used.  However, you can benefit from the various platform's capabilities to have a fully functional business automation to drive efficiency across your business.

 

Home Search page

The exception handling specialist starts from the Home Search page to apply a filter to search for the refund requests that he/she needs to investigate.  Within the Home Search page, there are 2 sub-tabs. (1) The first tab shows the list of refund requests that need investigation and the exception handling specialist can apply a filter to find the request that he/she needs.  (2) The second tab shows all the refund requests including the rejected or approved requests. 

Services (Actions) for Home Search page

Potentially, IBM Business Automation Workflow can be used to handle the approval and the refund process.   Content Services Designer can be used to handle collecting the required documents that are needed to support the refund.  Decision Services Designer can be used to determine the list of supporting documents required depending on policies or request type and to determine if the refund can be automatically approved based on the supporting documents.

To search for the refund request in the Home Search page, potentially, a Service (Action) can call a service flow from IBM Business Automation Workflow to get the list of the refund requests based on status or request type, etc. 

 

 

Request Details page

After the exception handling specialist finds the refund request that he/she needs to investigate, he/she can click the ID in the search list to go to the Request Details page.  The middle section of this page shows the list of required documents that need to be collected to support the refund.  The bottom section of this page is a Content List view that shows the list of supporting documents that are already uploaded to the FileNet Content Manager repository.   The top section of this page shows the 3 possible actions depending on the refund reason details and whether the required documents listed in the middle section are uploaded (collected) or not in the bottom section.  The 3 possible actions are (1) to ask for more information so that this transaction can continue to be investigated; (2) to reject the request if the information and documents provided do not justify for the refund; and (3) to propose to approve if all required documents are uploaded to support the refund. 

 

Toolkit and Services (Actions) for Request Details page

In the middle section, to show the list of required documents that need to be collected to support the refund, a Service (Action) can potentially call a Decision service from Decision Designer or IBM Operational Decision Manager which will return the list depending on policies or request type.

In the bottom section, to show the list of supporting documents that are uploaded to the FileNet Content Manager repository, the Content Toolkit containing the Content List View can be used and below is the link with more details about the Content Toolkit. 

https://github.com/icp4a/content-toolkit

In the top section, when the exception handling specialist clicks the button to propose to approve the request, it can be a Service (Action) to call a Decision service from Decision Designer or IBM Operational Decision Manager which will determine if it can be automatically approved based on policies.  If the Decision service returns that the request can be automatically approved, it can then call another Service (Action) to start the refund process.  If the Decision service returns that the request cannot be automatically approved, it can then call a Service (Action) to start another approval process for a manager to review and approve the request. 



 

Page Flow for Request Approval template

Finally, we would like to talk about how you can use the last template, Request Approval template, to build an application that will streamline your request approval process by potentially leveraging various platform's capabilities. Above is the page flow for the Request Approval template.  There are 2 main pages: (a) Search Employee page and (b) Request Form page. 

 

Search Employee page

The employee starts from the Search Employee page to type in the email address to load his / her employee profile details.  After that, it will go to the Request Form page with the employee profile information pre-populated in the form. 

Service (Action) for Search Employee page

Potentially, IBM Business Automation Workflow can be used to handle the process of the service desk request.  Decision Services Designer can be used to determine whether the request can be approved depending on policies and employee profile information. 

To load the employee profile information, in the Search Employee page, potentially, a Service (Action) can call a service flow from IBM Business Automation Workflow to get the employee profile details so that the employee information can be pre-populated in the Request Form page. 

 

 

Request Form page

The Request Form page allows the employee to request for different types of services e.g. move to home office, maintenance, repair and installation of equipment, etc.  After the submission of the request, it will show the status whether the request is approved or not based on policies. 

 

Services (Actions) for Request Form page

When the employee clicks the Submit button to make the service desk request, it can be a Service (Action) to call a Decision service from Decision Designer or IBM Operational Decision Manager which will determine if the request can be approved based on policies and employee profile.  If the Decision service returns that the request can be approved, it can then call another Service (Action) to start the process of the service desk request.  Otherwise, the process will not be started. 

 

Conclusion:

In conclusion, IBM Business Automation Application Designer enables business users to build business user interfaces called applications.  The application templates and the example above illustrate how you can benefit from the capabilities of the platform and various Cloud Pak for Automation offerings to build applications that drive efficiency across your business.

 

 



#BusinessAutomationStudio
#CloudPakforBusinessAutomation
0 comments
18 views

Permalink