Transition Types (Advanced Models)

Manual and Background Outcomes

When using Advanced models in Flowset, the behaviour of Activities is broken down into Task Models.  These task models are able to gather information from the agent and based upon the information supplied are able to direct the agent through the correct path to the desired outcome.

As such, the Task Model will define the normal flow of the process based on manual interaction with the agent.

There are a number of background events that can occur on a ticket which are not part of the normal flow of the ticket through the workflow defined on it.  An example is when a ticket has been set to pending awaiting a response from the requester and the requester provides the response.  In this case, the ticket status will change automatically to open.  It would be difficult to model what behaviour you would expect when such a background event occurs, since you can never really be sure when it might occur.

Flowset allows you to define for a Task Model, which background events it should respond to and what it should do.  See Process State, Helper and Control Fields (for Advanced) for details of how to define Background Events.

• The Task model will define outcomes which will control the availability of Manual Transitions
• The Background Events will define background outcomes which cause Automatic transitions to be performed.

This Task Model defines 3 outcomes Not Hired, Hired and Delayed.

This Background Events model defines 3 outcomes BG Auto 1, Normal and Escalated.

Transition Types

When a transition flows from an Activity which has no background events defined, the transition will always be a manual transition and all outcomes available to choose from will be manual outcomes from the Task Model.

When the source Activity of the flow has background event outcomes defined, there will be a dropdown in the transition properties to select the transition type.  Available options are

• Manual Transition
• Automatic Transition

The list of outcomes from which you can choose will be based on the transition type.  Manual Transition type will give the list of outcomes from the Task Model (e.g. Not Hired, Hired, Delayed).  Automatic Transition type will give a list of Background Event outcomes (e.g. BG Auto 1, Normal, Escalated)

Automatic transitions are represented with a dashed flow line, Manual transitions have a solid line.

Note: You cannot have more than one transition of the same type between two shapes on a diagram.  Therefore, if you need to have an automatic and manual transition between the same two shapes, you will need to create the automatic transition first and then add the manual one.  If you create the manual one first, you will not be able to add another one (until you change it's type to automatic).

Automatic transitions will occur when the background event happens.  There will not need to be any interaction from an agent to cause the transition to occur.  In the example above, as soon as the Background event occurs which results in the Escalated outcome, the workflow will Automatically transition to the Handle Escalation activity.