You Asked, We Delivered! RSA Archer 6.6 Advanced Workflow Happy Dance

[CaylorNorris]

You asked, we delivered! Another release and more BANGIN’ Advanced Workflow functionality in RSA Archer 6.6!!! Colleagues, friends, and fellow RSA Archer administrators – We heard you on RSA Ideas, so these Advanced Workflow enhancements are for you! The new Advanced Workflow functionality in RSA Archer 6.6 puts an emphasis on usability for users and configurability for administrators. RSA Archer 6.6 includes FIVE major Advanced Workflow updates just for you!

Tired of using clunky workarounds for enrolling records into Advanced Workflow when it is time for an annual review or a risk record has sky-rocketed to high? Good. RSA Archer 6.6 now includes a new ADVANCED WORKFLOW SCHEDULING action! Advanced Workflow Scheduling allows you to configure rules for enrolling records into Advanced Workflow AUTOMATICALLY. You can unleash this functionality from the RSA Archer's “Manage Schedules” page.

Why do my Advanced Workflow buttons show in the wrong order? Why is my button order “Reject” and “Accept”? Everyone knows it should be “Accept” and “Reject”, but swapping them around is WAY TOO MUCH EFFORT. Say no more, friends. RSA Archer 6.6 now comes with a straightforward way of ordering your Advanced Workflow User Action buttons. Navigate to a User Action node in RSA Archer 6.6 and you will see that there is now a configuration for “Order”. YOU CAN ORDER YOUR BUTTONS NOW!!! Say goodbye to confusing button orders and an even more confusing workaround.

It is 7:00 PM on a Friday evening and your phone rings. You look to your spouse and say, “Oh no, its work!”

You answer the call and it is one of your end users. They frantically say, “ADMIN! ADMIN! ADMIN! I received an error stating, “Cannot transition to the next advanced workflow node. The rule condition associated with selected transitions were not met.” What do I do? Please help?”

You set down your happy hour beverage of choice and ask, “Did you fill out all of the required fields?”

THIS DOESN’T NEED TO HAPPEN ANYMORE IN RSA Archer 6.6! The power is in your hands now! Administrators are now empowered to enable their end users by providing SPECIFIC AND CUSTOM VALIDATION MESSAGES for user action transition rules. You can now define these messages in the rule configuration of a transition. 

 

“AIN'T NOBODY GOT TIME FOR THAT!!!” We’ve all seen our favorite green record page toaster tray when Advanced Workflow is processing. I imagine it being comparable to a hostage situation… where you are the hostage. In RSA Archer 6.6, escape and click the “Exit Record” button that now appears on the green toaster tray.

 

You will also see an upgraded Advanced Workflow Designer in RSA Archer 6.6! There is now a new look and feel while configuring Advanced Workflows. The new node design will allow you to see more of your advanced workflow in a single screen. Keeping our third-party technologies up-to-date is crucial to unleashing the latest and greatest functionality of Advanced Workflow.

 

I hope you’ll join us for THIS Friday’s Free Friday Tech Huddle to hear all about the BANGIN’ new Advanced Workflow features of RSA Archer 6.6!!! Please stay tuned to the blog for more updates on the whiz-bang features of RSA Archer 6.6!

[KyleCribbs1]

Is there any talks about adding a trigger for advanced workflows. For example, on creating a record or on updating a record? It would automatically send it through the workflow having it check stuff, modify stuff, whatever.

[CaylorNorris]

Hi Kyle, 

Thanks for the comment, but I'm not sure that I understand the question. Can you direct message me with additional information on your use case?

Thanks,

Caylor Norris

[KyleCribbs1]

Currently, a user has to click a "button" at the top to push it through the workflow. Are there talks about having a "trigger" to push it through the workflow? e.g. when a record is  saved it looks if it has met a criteria, if so it will advance it in the workflow.

[CaylorNorris]

Advanced Workflow buttons actually save the record too. You can skip the save button and just click the Advanced Workflow button instead. 

Additionally, if you are talking about enrollment into Advanced Workflow, you can set the enrollment type to "New Records". This means that the record is automatically enrolled into Advanced Workflow after the first save of the record. 

[Anonymous]

Kyle,

You additionally may be able to utilize the AWF Scheduling feature available in RSA Archer Platform 6.6" data-type="space‌ and announced above to enroll content based on record criteria into your workflow.

[KyleCribbs1]

What about on Update? For example, some part of the workflow sends an email to a POC to fill out information. They open the record, fill out values, text, whatever. They click Save (not the next button), this now runs through the advanced workflow, and the advanced workflow looks for a particular value set to push it through the workflow.

[Anonymous]

There is an intentional delineation between Save / Save and Close, and the AWF buttons. There are valid cases where user needs to provide data but not advance the record in AWF. This is where the Save / Save and Close buttons work wonderfully as they allow data capture without workflow progression. For the other case, where the data is provided and the workflow needs to advance, the AWF buttons handle both saving the record and then following the workflow logic forward.

Future versions of Archer will make this distinction more clear to the users from the UI.

[KyleCribbs1]

That's what I am referring too though. We are not a fan of the users clicking the buttons to advance in the workflow. It would be nice to have an option to get rid of those and the workflow determine if it needs to advance. 

[Anonymous]

That concept needs to go through RSA Ideas for the RSA Archer Suite‌.

If I'm remembering correctly, the reason we delineated them was performance. Evaluating the Workflow on every Save has a performance cost associated to it, just like notifications, calculations, etc. To reduce that burden and keep Content Save as snappy as we can, advancement was isolated to distinct and deliberate actions.

[PaulDouglas]

Just wondering if you could use a combination of the Evaluate Content and Wait for Content Update nodes?

If you put the right rules in the Evaluate Content to check each of your fields and values, you could push it through the process based on the record being saved.

[TimothyYoung]

Very Nice!  We appreciate you RSA for listening...