As a marketer, you can build custom workflows in SAS Customer Intelligence 360 (CI 360) to automate the specific needs of your marketing teams by using workflow templates. Workflow templates represent the typical workflow process in your marketing organization. Workflows consist of a series of steps or tasks that are executed in a specific order to track and manage the progress of a project. To define a workflow is to illustrate the process as a series of tasks that need to be completed either sequentially or simultaneously.
For example, you might want to create workflows for product launches, collateral designs, advertising, direct marketing, sponsorship, event management, and so on.
You begin by using a business process execution engine, such as Flowable Modeler, to create an outline of your custom workflow process definition. Then, you can import your custom workflow process definitions as templates into CI 360. A workflow template must be created with Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) version 2.0 and file format File name.bpmn20.xml. For more information about creating a custom workflow process definition using Flowable Modeler, see the Template Creation Document for CI360 Workflows.
Custom workflow templates can be further configured and modified after a template is imported into CI 360. Once the requirements are defined, an administrator can edit the workflow template settings when configuring workflows. By configuring the template, an administrator can associate the templates with items in CI 360 to create a workflow process. For more information, see the topic "Managing Workflow Templates" in the SAS Customer Intelligence 360: Administration Guide.
CI 360 supports two types of workflow templates: Generic and Approval:
- A generic workflow process is used for the regular flow of tasks in an organization. You can design your own custom workflow templates for the set of tasks that are specific to your organization.
- An approval workflow process is a workflow with a single task, which can be used to review and approve items in CI 360. By default, approval templates are available for all items. For more information, see the topic "Edit an Approval Template" in the SAS Customer Intelligence 360: Administration Guide.
An administrator must first create and configure the workflow template settings. An administrator has the option to specify standard information about the workflow tasks, such as task duration, instructions, and the typical set of contributors (users or groups) who will work on the workflow tasks. The information that is specified by the administrator in the workflow tasks of the template becomes the default information in the workflow that is associated with that template. A workflow user can, then, initiate a workflow by selecting a suitable workflow template for specific work allocation, and assign tasks to users for tracking the execution and progress of various types of marketing activities.
Depending on the workflow template that you selected for the workflow, the tasks and related settings are preconfigured for user task types and service tasks. You can add contributors only for generic type or item approval type of workflow tasks that are included in a predefined workflow template. A service task does not have any contributors. The settings that your administrator defined in the associated workflow template of a workflow determine whether users can also attach or upload related resources and add comments and annotations. For more information, see the topic "Creating Workflows" in the SAS Customer Intelligence 360: User's Guide.
When a change is implemented in a workflow template, the associated workflows will continue to use the existing workflow template. Any new workflows that are initiated after the change will use the updated workflow template.
