Workflow elements

Operation, account request, and access request workflows are made up of processes and activities. Workflows are made up of one or more of these elements:

Processes

Processes define the activities and flow between activities that are needed to run a business process. Processes include these elements: activities, transitions, input/output parameters, and relevant data.

Activities

Activities represent the business logic for a specific task in a workflow process. An activity is represented in a workflow as a node.ISIM supports the following types of nodes:

• Approval
• Mail
• Request for Information (RFI)
• Operation
• Loop
• Extension activities
• Script
• Workorder
• Subprocess, which is available only for account request and access request workflows. We cannot include a Subprocess activity in an operation workflow.

In order to support the business logic of an activity, input and output parameters might be required. For activities, input and output parameters represent data that is passed to and returned from the activity. You use relevant data to associate the input and output parameters of an activity with any data that is stored in the process.

When sending notification messages from workflow activities, we can specify dynamic content in those messages to personalize and customize them appropriately. Dynamic content can also be used to customize the action text for a workflow activity.

Transitions

Transitions represent a flow between two activities. When a workflow process is run, the flow from one activity to another activity is controlled by the conditional logic (JavaScript coding) in the transitions and the activity configuration information. We can define both serial and parallel flows with ISIM.

Input/output parameters

Input and output parameters define the data that is passed into and returned from a workflow process. Some workflow processes in ISIM might restrict the customization of input and output parameters.

Relevant data

Relevant data defines the global variable data for workflow processes. We can use this variable data to pass data from one activity to the next by associating it with activity parameters. Output parameters that result from an activity are stored as a relevant data item. They are then passed from relevant data and become the input parameter for another activity.

Transitions can also access and use relevant data in their conditional logic.

Activity participants

Activity participants are IBM Security Identity Manager users who are assigned to interact with activities in a workflow process. Activities might include approvals, mail, requests for information, and work orders.An activity participant can be any of the following users:

• A specific user with an ISIM account.
• A specific user assigned to a particular organizational role.
• A user with a specific relationship, such as a supervisor or services owner.

Some workflow activities might restrict the list of available participants. Some activities (mail, work order activities) can be configured to not require the participant to be an ISIM user at all.

JavaScript

Many of the workflow elements, such as transitions and script elements, integrate the JavaScript scripting language in order to enable customization of workflow processes. In addition to the standard JavaScript extensions, IBM Security Identity Manager provides JavaScript extensions that we can use to access processes, activities, relevant data, and participants.

• Common attributes for workflow activities
  Each workflow activity has a set of attributes that must be configured in order for the workflow to work properly.
• Transitions
  Transitions are the pathways that connect various workflow activities. Nodes are connected with transition lines to form a workflow.
• Start and end nodes
  The start node defines the beginning of a workflow and the end node defines the end of a workflow.
• Approval node
  Use the approval node to add a request for approval when adding or modifying people, accounts, and access.
• Mail node
  Use the mail node to specify the recipient type and content to be emailed to a user in an email notification.
• Request for information node
  Use the request for information (RFI) node within entitlement and operation workflows to solicit account or user-related information from a user with an ISIM account.
• Operation node
  Use the operation node to invoke an existing operation from within a workflow.
• Loop node
  Use the loop node to execute one or more nodes in a loop. Nested loops are not supported.
• Extension node
  Use the extension node to start an application extension from within the workflow.
• Script node
  Use the script node to add logic to the workflow through the use of JavaScript code.
• Work order node
  Use the Work order node to send email to an ISIM user.

  The email either requests some type of manual activity or is a simple notification.

• Subprocess node
  Use the subprocess node to execute one entitlement workflow from another.

Parent topic: Workflow planning