What's the difference between an "Integration" in U-LINC and a "Workflow"?

<soapbox>

I have always been a stickler when it comes to technical terminology because often time’s miscommunication occurs when someone inadvertently says one thing, but means another. My coworkers (and my wife :) hate it when I “correct”their statement using a more precise &/or correct word. However, I believe it is important for the listener to fully understand the thought that is being conveyed.

<soapbox/>

That being said, our internal team as well as our customers and partners have had some confusion as we have rolled out U-LINC in distinguishing where an “Integration” ends and a “Workflow” begins. 

Quite simply, a U-LINC Integration is the definition of the business critical data that we want to listen for changes on in SQL Server.

From Websters Online Dictionary:

Workflow

A workflow is a reliably repeatable pattern of activity enabled by a systematic organization of resources, defined roles and mass, energy and information flows, into a work process that can be documented and learned. Workflows are always designed to achieve processing intents of some sort, such as physical transformation, service provision, or information processing.

Workflows are closely related to other concepts used to describe organizational structure, such as silos, functions, teams, projects, policies and hierarchies. Workflows may be viewed as one primitive building block of organizations. The relationships among these concepts are described later in this entry.

The term is used in computer programming to capture and develop human to machine interaction. Workflow software aims to provide end users with an easier way to orchestrate or describe complex processing of data in a visual form, much like flow charts but without the need to understand computers or programming.

In the case of SharePoint, the automation of a “Workflow” is handled by the SharePoint Workflow engine and is comprised of “Steps” and “Actions”.  You can group your workflow actions within a series of steps.  These steps can mirror your current manual business process.  The actions can then automate some of the work that needs to occur to complete a particular business process.  SharePoint has several workflow actions included out of the box and you can extend the workflow actions available to you through the many extensibility tools available for SharePoint, some free, some for a fee.

Given these definitions, we can have a single “Integration” which could have multiple “Workflows”.  For example, you have a workflow for customer credit limit changes and a workflow for collecting a customer tax exemption number.  Both of these workflows would be supported by a single U-LINC “Integration”.

I hope this brings clarity to the difference between these tightly interwoven concepts.

How does U-LINC work?

U-LINC is a SQL Server to SharePoint application.  Essentially, when data is changed in an identified table in a SQL database, the system will push that information to a SharePoint list.  Once that information is in a SharePoint list, you can use SharePoint workflow to handle the business process logic.  There are many ways to create a workflow in SharePoint.  You can use reusable workflows and attach them to a list through a web browser on your SharePoint site.  Another option is to use SharePoint Designer to create a workflow.  It has the ability to perform parallel processes, conditional steps, assign SharePoint tasks, along with a miriad of other options.  You can extend the workflow actions available to the workflow using free tools like ILoveSharePoint (http://ilovesharepoint.codeplex.com).  Another option is to use a SharePoint extensibility tool like Nintex Workflow ( http://www.nintex.com/en-US/Products/Pages/NintexWorkflow2010.aspx) to graphically build a workflow.  Once the workflow is built, the worflow status can be exposed in Dynamics GP using the U-LINC for Dynamics GP Adapter.  The end user can define which windows in Dynamics GP get the U-LINC workflow ribbon as well as which fields &/or buttons on the form are locked when a displayed record is in workflow.  With these tools, the end user has everything they need to enforce complex business processes and receive real-time notifications of critical business information.

More to come ...

U-LINC Batch Approvals

One often asked question is, "Can I do batch approvals with U-LINC?"  The simple answer is yes, but the devil is always in the details.  This approach applies to any transaction type, RM, PM, GL, etc.  Conceptually, the user wants to create a transaction, and then force the system to go through an approval process for the batch that it is saved to.  That being said, the workflow is actually on the batch header record, but it is initiated when a transaction is created.

So, what we do is setup two U-LINC integrations.  The first integration is on the batch header table.  We then put an approval process workflow on the supporting list for this integration.
 
We then create a second integration on the transaction open table and create a workflow on the second list that starts the workflow on the batch header list item.  There are a couple ways to do this.  One way would be to use the "Start Another Workflow" action in the http://spdactivities.codeplex.com/ project.  This is a free CodePlex project that will give you some really useful workflow actions.  Secondly, we could add a column to our batch header list called "Workflow Status".  The transaction workflow could then set the value of this field to "In Process".  The batch header workflow would fire because the record was changed and the approval process would kick off.  The last step of the batch workflow would be to set the "Workflow Status" to "Completed".

Like I stated before, this is a generic answer for any type of batch approval process.  Remember, the great thing about U-LINC is that it is only limited by your imagination!

Until next time ...

Integrity Data's newest product - U-LINC (Workflow anywhere)

So our dev team has been discussing putting out some blogs to help our customers better utilize our latest wonder child, U-LINC.

"U-LINC has made workflow virtually anytime and anywhere for Microsoft Dynamics a reality. It works seamlessly within and across your existing Microsoft Dynamics system without changing the way the organization does business. U-LINC is flexible, easy to use, and greatly improves organizational performance."

As such, I am going to (time permitting) start blogging on some of the really cool things you can do to better utilize U-LINC in your environment.  Watch for the posts to start rolling out soon ...

More to come ...