Creating and updating workflows

In This Article

This article will explain how to create, update, and delete Workflows.

Setup

Before you can create a Workflow, you must first create the Statuses that the Workflow will use.

See the article Managing Statuses for instructions.

Note

Statuses are the steps in your team’s working process that describe the state of a shipment.

A Workflow in Logiware is a set of statuses and transitions that a shipment moves through during its lifecycle, and typically represents the shipment process within your organization. You can setup Workflows for different shipment types (Ocean, Air, FCL, LCL, etc..).

Tranistions are how a shipment can move between statuses. In order for a shipment to move between two statuses, a transition must exist. A transition is a one-way link, so if a shipment needs to move back and forth between two statuses, two transitions need to be created.

Navigation

Click on Appliction Switcher > Control Panel > Workflow Configuration > Booking Workflows

The Booking Workflows page will appear:

Steps

Steps

A workflow is created in 4 main steps:

Step 1: Naming the workflow and identifying the shipment types that can use the workflow.

Step 2: Adding Steps (Statuses) to the workflow.

Step 3: Adding Transitions to connect steps in a workflow.

Step 4: Adding Validations to a Transition

Step 1: Naming the workflow and identifying the shipment types that can use it.

Click the Create button to add a new Booking Workflow:

The Create Booking Workflow page will appear:

Enter the details in the General section:

Name - Enter the name of the workflow.
Description - Enter a brief description of the workflow.
Shipment Type - Select the type of shipments that can use this workflow.
Shipment Direction - Select the direction of shipments that can use this workflow.

Step 2: Adding Steps (Statuses) to the workflow

Add Workflow Steps to your workflow using the Workflow Steps section of the screen:

Select the Linked Status
- This is the status that will be the starting status for the workflow. You will only be able to selet statuses that have a Category of "Start".
- It is optional to enter a brief description of the workflow step, if you want to provide more details.

Next , click the + Add Workflow Step button:

The Workflow Step will be added to the Workflow:

To remove a workflow step, click on the Delete Step link:

Step 3: Adding tranistions to connect steps in a workflow

Once you have added the steps (Statuses) to the workflow,

Click on the Add Transition link to add a transition to any of the workflow steps:

A pop-up window will appear:

The From section will be automatically filled with the current Step (Status) that you are ading a transition to.

In the To section:
- Enter the Transition Name - this is the namee you want to call the transition. It should be an action verb (for example: Send invoice to the customer).
- Select the Target Status that this workflow step will transition to.
- The Transition Description field is optional and can be used to describe the ttransition in more detail.
- Press the Submit button..

The Cancel button will return you to the previous screen and will not add the Transition.

The Transition will be added to the workflow step:

Tip

You can add multiple Transitions to a workflow step.

To Remove a Transition from a workflow step, click on the Garbage Can icon in the Tranistion box:

Step 4: Adding Validations to Transitions

Validations

Validations can be added to transitions to require actions before a quote or booking can be moved to a new Status. Validations can include:

Required fields - The quote/booking cannot move to the next status until the validation fields have been entered.
Documents - The quote/booking cannot move to the next status until the validation documents have been added.
Upload Documents - The quote/booking cannot move to the next status until the validation documents have been uploaded.

Setup

If you want to organize your Workflow Steps so that they are in sequential order, you will need to plan out the steps in advance since the system will organize them in the order that you add the steps. If you need to rearrange the steps at any time, you will need to delete the steps and then re-add them in the order you desire.