Understanding Cypress Workflow

This topic describes the processes of the Cypress Workflow.

Overview

Cypress Workflow provides a facility to automate and control workflow processes. A process can consist of human intervention interspersed with automatic processing. Cypress handles the process flow from one step to the next and facilitate the passing of documents and variable information. A History of the workflow processes is maintained.

A Cypress Workflow process is configured through an XML file that is imported into the Cypress DocuVault. This XML describes the basic information about the process, such as the process name and security access, and then describes each step of the process. Each step is identified through a GUID.

A Cypress Workflow process can contains three types of steps: manual, automatic, and external.

  • A manual step waits for a user to perform some operation. In this step, a workflow process is displayed in the Workflow section of the recipient’s Inbox. The user can view the attached document(s) and perform the necessary operation to move the process on to the next selected step. A manual step can be configured with a “time out” to move it to some other step if it is not acted upon within the specified time.
  • An automatic step is performed by Cypress by executing a workflow program. These programs are written in a variation of the CPF language and are placed in the Workflow source directory on the Cypress server. Cypress executes the program, and advance the workflow process to the next designated step. Automatic steps can create documents, send emails, deliver documents to printers or inboxes, make decisions about the process based on document content, and so on.
  • An external step is one that is waiting on some event from outside the Cypress system. Cypress web services is used to “trigger” an external step to move it on to the following step.

Starting Workflow Process

A Cypress Workflow process can be started by selecting a document in an Inbox and clicking on the “Start Workflow” button. A list of the Workflow processes that the user has access to is displayed, and the user can select the appropriate process for this document. Any required information (variables) can then be entered and the process started.

A Workflow process can also be started through a call to Cypress web services.

This is an example from the Inbox viewer when a Workflow process is started.

Refer Workflow Examples topic for a sample process XML and a CWF program.

History

A history of Workflow processes and instances is maintained by Cypress and can be viewed through the Workflow Administration interface. This history contains records about each workflow instance and the steps that it executed.