SAS RGF: Enabling SAS Workflow Administration

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Introduction

Workflows in SAS Risk Stratum typically involve tasks related to data collection and data integration, risk modelling, risk monitoring and analysis, stress testing, scenario analysis, regulatory reporting, data visualization and dashboards, compliance, and auditing, and many more.

SAS Risk Stratum provides a platform to streamline and automate these workflows. This, in turn, helps financial institutions manage and mitigate risk effectively and ensure compliance with regulatory standards. As with any SAS solutions, the specific steps and tools used in each workflow will depend on the organization's specific risk management requirements and regulatory obligations.

SAS Risk Governance Framework (RGF) provides the foundation for the UI in SAS Risk Stratum platform and this UI is consistent across all the solution content packages. By default, the SAS Workflow Administration tab is not displayed in SAS RGF. This post is about how to go about how to make this tab visible in SAS RGF.

SAS Workflow Architecture

SAS Workflow Architecture is designed to facilitate the creation, management, scheduling, and monitoring of workflows within the SAS environment. There are several components that make up the SAS Workflow Architecture, but from the point of view of SAS Risk Solutions, the three most important components are SAS Workflow Services, SAS Workflow Studio, and SAS Workflow Administrator.

SAS Workflow Services is a component within the SAS ecosystem that provides a set of services and tools for executing business processes. It allows us to integrate people, systems, and business logic according to the steps defined in each business process.

SAS Workflow Studio is a GUI that is used to create and manage workflows. We can design workflows by arranging tasks and defining their dependencies.

The last and the least familiar component of the SAS Workflow Architecture is the SAS Workflow Administrator. This a web plug-in that specifically focuses on monitoring active workflow instances. The plug-in offers a user-friendly interface for tracking and managing the status and progress of workflows that are currently running.

Methodological Overview

To enable SAS Workflow Administrator in SAS RGF, we adopt a three-pronged implementation mechanism.

• Step I: Provide appropriate capabilities in SAS Management Console (SMC) to enable access to SAS Web Administration Console.
• Step II: Assign appropriate workflow roles in SAS Web Administration Console to enable access to SAS Workflow Administration.
• Step III: Modify Screen Definitions to enable visibility of SAS Workflow Administration tab in the Cycles page in SAS RGF.

Step I – Use SMC to Create User Account with Permissions to Access SAS Web Administration Console

The first step in the process is optional in the sense that if we already have users who have the appropriate capabilities to access SAS Web Administration Console then we can skip Step I.

In this example we are going to create a new user account in SMC and then assign the required capabilities (in Step II) to enable this new user to access the SAS Web Administration Console.

1. Log in to SMC and select User Manager under the Plug-ins tab in the left panel. Needless to say, we must have administrative privileges to access SMC.
2. Right-click in the panel displaying user, groups, and roles, and select New > User.
3. In the New User Properties window, enter a suitable Name and Display Name. We are going to enter saswebadmin in the Name field and SAS Web Administrator as the Display Name.

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4. Click the Groups and Roles and move SAS Administrators from the Available Groups and Roles panel to the Member of panel on the right.

5. Next click on the Accounts tab and click on the Create Internal Account button located at the lower edge of the window.
6. Enter a suitable New Password and Confirm it in the New internal account for SAS Web Administrator window.

7. Click OK to go back to the New User Properties window. We can also the see that the Internal Account: saswebadmin@saspw is now ready to be set-up.

8. Click OK to create the new internal account (saswenadmin@saspw).

Step II – Assigning appropriate workflow roles in SAS Web Administration Console

In this step we use the SAS Web Administration Console to enable permissions necessary for accessing SAS Workflow Administrator in SAS RGF. These permissions are not available in SMC, the primary administration and configuration tool for various SAS Risk Solutions. Rather, these are available in SAS Web Administration Console, which is a web-based interface to administer and manage various aspects of the SAS platform and its associated software applications. It is a key component of the SAS platform that allows administrators to perform a wide range of administrative tasks related to SAS software and its server components.

1. Open a browser to access SAS Web Administration Console at the URL: <hostname:port>/SASAdmin.
2. Sign in to SAS Web Administration Console using the saswebadmin@saspw administrative account.
3. Using the navigation panel on the left go to the Authorization page.
4. In the Authorization page, make sure the Assign Roles tab is selected.
5. Under (1) Select an Item, select the radio button for Users.

6. Click (2) You must select an identity, and then select the radio button for rgfadmin. This is because in order to include SAS Workflow Administrator in the set of accessible capabilities, a user, at the minimum, must be part of RGF Data Administrators Group – and rgfadmin belongs to this group.

7. Click (3) Role, and then select the checkbox against the role ROLE_WORKFLOW_ADMINISTRATOR.

8. Click Finish to complete the workflow related role assignment for rgfadmin.

Step III – Modifying Screen Definitions to Enable Visibility of SAS Workflow Administration Tab

In the final step, we will access and modify the relevant screen definition file in SAS RGF to surface the SAS Workflow Administration tab in the Cycles page.

1. Log in to SAS Risk Stratum using the credentials for rgfadmin user account.
2. Open the Cycles page using the Navigation Panel on the left.
3. From the list of cycles, click on any one of them to open it.Once we open the cycle, we are taken to the Cycle page which details out the cycle status, the workflow activity at which the cycle is currently on, the workflow template being used, the associated model parameters, etc. for the selected cycle.
4. In the Permissions and Visibility section we notice a set of tabs indicating the Model Parameters, Analysis Runs, Execution Logs, Related Objects and the ability to View Relationships amongst them, and Documentation.

5. Click the  icon access the screen definition associated with the page being displayed.
6. Click Ok in the pop-up window warning about the loss of all the changes initiated so far on this page.
7. In the Cycle.XML file displayed use the  icon to open the Find and Replace window.
8. Enter Workflow Tab in Find What Box and click Find Next.
9. When the first instance of Workflow Tab is found close the Find and Replace window. The comments in the Workflow Tab section indicates that the XML code is related to the workflow tab which, by default, is not displayed.
10. Change the relevant lines of code associated with the Workflow Tab from visible=“false” to visible=“true” (<tab id="workflow" visible="true">).

11. Click Publish on the top right corner to save and display the changes.
12. Once we are back in the HTML view of the Cycle UI we can scroll down to the Permissions and Visibility section again. The Workflow tab is now visible next to the Documentation tab.

13. Click on the Workflow tab.
14. We are now able to see the active workflow template (RMC_Cycle), and the version number (1.1).

15. The color code at the top indicates tasks that are Active, Finished or Not Started.
16. The Navigation Panel in the Workflow tab indicates the two broad subgroups of components that make up the workflow in the panel on the right – Tasks and Data Objects.
17. The diagrammatic representation of the workflow (or workflow design view) looks overly complex. This is because of the complex interactivity of the tasks with decision gateways, notifications, and policies.
18. 18. We also have different swimlanes (boxes with headers), which are used to group tasks that can be assigned to same groups of participants.For example, the swimlane with the header @RGF_ROLE_RMC_RISK_ANALYST_RGF_ADMINIS has been assigned the Sign-off task. For this swimlane, users who have the roles RMC: Risk Analyst or RGF: Administrator can execute the Sign-off task.

Additional Information

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