A workflow is defined using the workflow designer:

The designer is composed of three parts.

Flowchart View

The flowchart view is the left-most portion of the designer and displays the workflow as a flowchart. The following commands are available for the flowchart view:

Icon	Tool Tip	Meaning
	New	Replaces the current workflow with an empty one.
	Open	Replaces the current workflow one previously saved to your computer.
	Save	Saves the current workflow to your computer.
	Expand	Expands the current activities to display their contents.
	Collapse	Collapses the active activities to hide their contents.
	Zoom	Sets the zoom level of the flowchart view from 50% to 400%.
	Zoom In	Allows you to zoom in at a specific location.
	Zoom Out	Allows you to zoom out at a given location.
	Pan	Allows you to scroll the flowchart view.

Toolbar

The toolbar section is located in the top-right corner of the designer. It is a list of available activities that can be dragged into the flowchart. The toolbar is divided into sections, grouping activities by their function:

Section	What it does
Attachment Queue	Manages a set of attachments
Conditions	Defines True/False conditions
Based On	Allows for the creation of date based activities
Do	Control the flow of activity processing
Document Generation	Generates Documents and Forms
Files	Work with external files
Flow Control	Alters the execution of activities
FTP	Access FTP sites
Imaging	Allows reading, writing and modification of images
Microsoft Outlook	Interface with Microsoft Outlook
Misc	Miscellaneous activities
PDF Queue	Manages PDF files
Phones	Control phone lines allowing for interactive operations
Speech	Create voice enabled workflows
Tasks	Create eCandidus™ tasks
Workflow	Control the execution of other workflows
Workflows	Reuse workflow templates

You can hide any section by double clicking on the section label.

Activity Definition

The activity definition is displayed at the lower corner if the display. The definition entries depend on the activity selected and define the options for the task.

Information

The Information screen displays information about the workflow:

Field	Meaning
Name	The name of the workflow
Merge If	Types of objects to which the workflow applies. Using Workflows allows for the creation of workflow templates

Where can activities be dragged to?

To use any activity drag it from the tool bar into the flowcahrt view. The flowchart will indicate where you can use the activity by displaying green plus icons in the appropriate places:

You can also click on any activity and move it to any place that the designer allows you to, by dragging it from its current location to any other location.

Removing activities

You can remove any activity by clicking on the activity and pressing the Delete key.

How are settings evaluated

All settings are evaluated by first replacing any merge codes with the appropriate value. There are three types of merge codes supported:

• Field [\...] - Obtains the value of a field in the case (or work product)
• Extension [#...] - Obtains the value from the workflow environment
• Ask [?...] - Asks the user for the value

Once the values are merged, the system check to see if the result starts with an equal = sign, and if so, the system will run the expression through a calculator. This calculator supports the standard mathematical operations, for example:

=[\Cost]-[\Expenses]

Will take the value from the cost field and subtract the value of the expense field and return the result.

There is an extra step done for fields that are dates, where the system checks to see if the results starts with a plus + or minus - sign and if so, the system will do a date calculation, for example:

+3d

Will compute the date as three days from today.

Also, for conditions fields, the system will check the result to see if it the word True or False, and if it is not, it will see if the result can be converted to a numberand return true if the value is not zero. This allows for loop conditions where a the system will loop until a counter reaches zero.

Note that the calculator mentioned above also supports comparison operators = != > >= < <=.

Environment

The environment is a storage area defined for each instance of a running workflow. Values stored in the environment can be used in any setting for each activity. For example:

Using the SetFields activity, you can set the message environment value to "Hello there"

Using [#message] in the Note setting for the Task - Create TTD will make the note the string "Hello there"

Any variable used before a value is defined, will be treated as an empty string.