ION workflow attachment

Currently, I am on 13.4 on Prem environment and I have ION workflow, it is trigged manually by users via the Ming.le home page widget. As per the standard widget, there is an option to upload an attachment when the workflow is triggered.

Is there any way to save this document to the IDM as well? As of now, I can see the attachment in workflow-generated tasks and notifications. Where is the attachment getting saved? In one view pluse BOD, I can’t see anything related to the attachment?

Regards

Prabodha

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Legacy Contributor

Hi,

We have to add the IDM manually, I had the same scenario where I assigned the task to a particular group of users to upload the attachments to IDM.

The attachment trace won't be available in one view pulse BOD or the activities in ION DESK.

prabodhaa

Hi Sudhakaran,

Noted and thanks for the prompt response. We will check with the users.

Regards

Prabodha

antonio-caria

You can add any document to IDM - manually or automatically (for example with MEC or IDM API).

Legacy Contributor

Prabodha/ Sudhakaran:
Workflow attachments documents are currently internally stored and available only in the context of the workflow and it's not accessible externally. If you want to upload to IDM, can you please explain the business requirement behind it so that it will help us to plan for this enhancement in the roadmap?

Regardless of the technical change in storage from ION workflow to IDM, what is the business benefit for you? Can you explain the use case behind this requirement? Is it to keep this attachment grouped with other related artefacts on that business object? Or other reasons/ benefits?
How do you see the document security and authorization? Do you want this document to be only accessible by ION workflow and not accessible externally via IDM ui? Or do you also have requirements for this document to be accessed externally via IDM UI? If external access is needed, would it be still restricted to only those users from the workflow distribution group? Or you want it to be accessible for any IDM user?
How do you see the document integrity/ versioning and consistency? What should happen in Workflow if the document is directly edited/ modified/ deleted in IDM? Do you want to block the external modification to begin with? Or would you expect workflow simply refers to the latest version in IDM? Or would you expect workflow to retain the version that was originally uploaded and any external change should be treated as a new version?

Legacy Contributor

Hi Vignesh,

The process is purchasing the Fixed asset.

1) A project manager used to manually get quote from supplier for purchasing a product.

2) workflow will be manually triggered by attaching the quotes and a task will be assigned to the responsible group to approve it.

3) once the quote is approved we will have subsequent tasks and notifications for assigning CAPEX numbers and creating a purchase order.

4) Finally a task will be assigned to the project manager to upload the quote manually to IDM with attributes, purchase order number, and CAPEX.

Also can you please take a look at these workflow-related questions?

https://community.infor.com/infor-developers/f/m3-development/27504/how-to-get-user-information-who-triggered-the-workflow

community.infor.com/.../setting-workflow-content-parameter-required

Catharine Linsbauer

Hi Prabodha
I created an enhancement request for this some time ago - please refer to https://ers.infor.com/Ers/ERS_Details.aspx?tbv=1&erID=60429

Meanwhile a colleague and I have made an interim solution for a customer to enable the feature. In a quotation approval user needs to add reference documentation within the workflow. We upload attachments to the task (standard functionality). Then task right after contains a link that uploads all documents in previous task to IDM, adding relevant attributes.

Catharine

Legacy Contributor

Hello Catharine

Can you provide some detail on how you created the task to upload workflow documents to IDM? We would also like to be able to do this.

Thanks

-Greg

Legacy Contributor

All, the use case descriptions from Sudhakaran and Catherine, only seem to address the need to group/ correlate a workflow attachment to existing artefacts in IDM. This is of course logical. But once a workflow attachment ends up in IDM, I am more interested in the

1. Authorization: Who can access/ modify the document in IDM? Is it, 1.) No one and the access remains to be from workflow; 2.) People from the workflow distribution list only? 3.) Anyone with independent access and permissions in IDM ?

2. Lifecycle: What should happen to the workflow reference to the attachment if its directly modified/ deleted/ moved in IDM? Should workflow continue to hold the true copy that was originally attached? Should it be simply referencing the current state of the document in IDM even if its modified externally? And accept the risk that it may also be deleted?

How would your business cases play out on the above scenarios?

Rees Howel

Hi Vignesh. Potential scenario is approval of a new customer before entering into ERP. Salesperson writes some kind of justification maybe attaching a spreadsheet and kicks off the workflow. Finance do an external credit check and attach their report (probably a PDF) and forward to CFO for a a decision.

If approved an API call could insert the customer record in ERP and then attach the credit report to IDM with appropriate attributes. In my mind the document in IDM is COPY of the document attached to the workflow. Only if we were to TRANSFER the document from the workflow to IDM do your questions really come into play.

My preference would be to limit modifications to the document in IDM via the document type ACL (as tight or loose as required in the circumstances). The original document in the workflow would naturally correspond to Version 1 in the IDM document History and could still be available for comparison (if not purged) should the need arise.

I suspect this approach would suit Sudhakaran's example too. The justification is simply to make the document(s) visible in ERP/IDM with the minimum of user intervention.

Hope this makes sense.

Rees

Legacy Contributor

Hi Vignesh,

I have a similar requirement.

1. Our use case is the workflow is started manually by a user for a check request. The document they would be attaching is the check request with all the necessary information. As the check request workflow goes through the tasks in the workflow, the various users can review the attached document, etc. Once the workflow is complete then I would want to save the document to IDM.

2. Regarding security in IDM, I would control that within the workflow and set authorizations.

3. I would like to prevent any changes to the document while the workflow is running. For example, possibly flag the document as checked out while the workflow is running. Also, any changes to the external document I would want it to be a new version as this is a check request and I would need what the original looked like.

Catharine Linsbauer

Hi Vignesh

Question 1 - We are not adding the attachments to existing artefacts in IDM - we create a new IDM document, using the relevant document type (depending on the workflow executed) and add the attachment to it. If there are more attachments in a task, we create a new document per attachment, and they will all be populated with the same attribute values.
Thus, we use standard security, based on ACL/ACL rules, connected to the document type. The service account of the workflow has an IDM role, allowing for uploading attachments but when creating the document, we can send in either a static ACL (default of document type) or an ACL, based on various parameters of the workflow. That would be reply 3 from above - anyone with independent access and permission in IDM.

Question 2 - In the processes we outline, using the upload function, the task holds the original attachment(s) and that is it. We do not want any updates to happen in the task. If a "attachment document" is deleted in IDM, then it is because the ACL/security role allows for it. For most document type we would not allow "normal" users to delete. Instead a retention policy, reading the status of the document would take care of managing a regular clean up.

Catharine Linsbauer

It is a joint venture with my colleague. He has built an SDK Homepage from which the necessary API calls are executed towards the workflow tasks and IDM.
To make it flexible/scalable the application holds a number of parameters (IDM0, IDM1, IDM2 etc). In the workflow I define in set expressions, which workflow parameter should be added to a corresponding IDM document attribute (example => IDM1= "&IDM1=Issuer::"&[Issuer]).
All individual set parameters are then merged and form the "upload link" that the user clicks in the "Upload task".
Only negative thing is that we need two tasks to do this as we cannot retrieve the task ID until a user opens it. So in the first task, user is asked to add attachments and click "Attachments to load" and right after that user gets another task, containing the link needed to upload the attachement(s).

Danil Klemeshov

Hello Catharine,

Could you please clarify your vision for the improvement? Are you considering saving workflow attachments in IDM as an additional option (the ability to choose for some workflows to save attachments in IDM and for some not) or should all workflow attachments be saved in IDM?

Danil

antonio-caria

correction "t's not accessible externally. in MT"

Catharine Linsbauer

Hi Danil, I definitively do not want all attachments to be saved to IDM as default. As stated in my enhancement request (https://ers.infor.com/ERS/SoHoXi/Request/XiDetails.aspx?tbv=1&erID=60429), I would want the IDM document type to control whether it is allowed to attach from a task. For some document types it should never be allowed - an example would be customer order invoice, which is a legal document. The parameter (controlled separately by the ACL in line with "Change ACL" and "Secure Attributes") should always default "No" (not possible to upload from attachment). If you have the right authorization, you are allowed to change to "Yes".
My thought is that this parameter could be part of the request parameters when using IDM/api/items to create a new document. It should however always display value from document type and cannot be changed and not be blank as $language or $checkout.
Danil

Danil Klemeshov

Hi Catharine,

Is it possible to have a scenario where one task can contain several attachments with different IDM document types?

Catharine Linsbauer

Hi Danil

Not the way we have set it up, because document type is part of the information, incorporated in the upload link. Then you would need a task per document type.

Catharine

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