Workflow Assistant - Change Handling

A workflow definition may be changed whilst an existing ticket is running the earlier version. This may mean that the workflow assistant can no longer accurately report its position in the workflow.

Visualisation in the Workflow Assistant

If the Workflow Assistant can no longer correlate its runtime state with the latest definition of the workflow, its user interface will switch into a mode that allows the agent to take corrective action.

Examples of when this might occur include :

• the ticket's current activity no longer exists in the workflow definition
• its entire workflow definition has been deleted

Example 1 - Removal of the current Activity from a Workflow Definition

Before Removal

Lets imagine the agent uses the information icon to view their position in the workflow

A modal appears showing the workflow diagram and highlighting the current activity, "Change Management"

• The ticket is currently on this activity (2).

After Removal

Now let us assume that the Workflow definition has been changed to remove this activity whilst the state of the ticket has remained unchanged

The agent reopens or refreshes the same ticket and now sees :

• The current activity is no longer present in the latest definition of the Change Management Workflow (3).
• A special list of transitions is presented to all remaining activities in the workflow (4).
• Or there is the option to completely remove the workflow from the ticket (5).

The current activity box now says "Missing Activity"

The agent can attempt to progress the ticket by jumping to any activity still defined in the workflow. Under these exceptional circumstances, all data quality checks will be ignored when transitioning to any of these other activities. [Because this behaviour means by-passing steps and data quality checks in the workflow, this ability to jump anywhere would never be allowed in normal operation]

If it makes no sense to try to continue with the new workflow definition on the current ticket, the workflow can be removed from the ticket completely.

Were the agent to use the information icon again to look at the latest workflow definition they would see that the ticket's current activity has been removed :

• "Change Managers Assessment" has been deleted so no current activity can be highlighted (6).

Example 2 - Deletion of the Workflow Definition currently running on a ticket

Let us now imagine that the entire "Change Management" workflow definition has been deleted. Returning to or refreshing the ticket, the Workflow Assistant now displays :

• There is no corrective action that the agent can take, other than to remove the workflow from the ticket (1).

Significance of changes to Workflows

Not all changes to a workflow definition will cause the Workflow Assistant to enter this corrective mode.

• Simple renaming of workflows activities, conditions, checklist items, and transitions will be detected on the fly and reflected in the Workflow Assistant when the ticket is next opened or refreshed.
• The same is true of entity descriptions
• Changes to conditions will also simply be re-evaluated against the current state of the ticket, so for example an activity that was previously considered to be complete may now show incomplete again based on evaluating the new condition rules
• If the onward routes from the current activity are changed, these will also be picked up automatically and reflected as a new set of transition choices