Workflows represent a company's different document flows. They are completely configurable and define the path that any individual ERP object (such as an order) must follow, depending on the conditions (for example, an order above a certain value must be approved by a sales director, otherwise by any salesperson, before the delivery can be triggered).

HAL ERP workflows could be configured for the below actions

1. Action-Based
   1. Approval
   2. Rejection or Cancellation
2. Information
   1. Email Notification
   2. ReachApp (MobileApp) Notification

To set up a workflow, you need to make sure you have the workflow module enabled in your license plan. If it is already enabled, then you will see it listed in the Menu as “Workflows” – Refer to the screenshot below.

To set up a workflow, click on Setup Workflows.

Configure a Workflow

Let us now set up a workflow for the following

Any purchase order with a total value of more than 50,000/- will need to be approved by the Manager or L1 Approver.

Under WORKFLOW MODULE AND TRIGGERS tab, select the following  

• Select Screen Type as “Form” indicating that the workflow will be initiated from one of the Form Screens
• Set Select Module as “Purchase Order Creation” from the dropdown since we are looking to set up for the PO module.
• Set the value of the Trigger field to be “On Add” as the workflow gets initiated the moment a new PO gets added.
• The value of the Execution field will be by default “Sequential”. You can choose to select either Sequential or Parallel in case of multiple levels of approvals and how you want the approvals to go sequentially or parallel. (I.e. IF there are 3 Levels of approvals- if you choose ‘sequential’ then the L2 Approver could approve only after L1 is approved and L3 could approve only after L1 and L2 are approved. For the same instance, If you choose ‘Parallel’ then all 3 approvals could approve independent of the levels)
• The Select report field will be enabled if the screen type is set as Reports ie when we create workflows for reports. We could choose the name of the report for the workflow to be created from the field.  In our case, it will not be applicable.
• The Frequency field will also be enabled when you create workflows for reports. In this field, we can choose whether the reports to be sent daily, weekly, monthly, or fortnightly.
• Conditional Sequence field will be used when there are multiple conditions set (which will be seen in the next section) and we can choose to say AND /OR conditions. Let’s say we define 3 conditions and the workflow has to be triggered if either of them is true. Then we could define 1 OR 2 OR 3. We can also define 1 AND 2 OR 3 / 1 AND 2 AND 3 and so on.

In the next tab- SET WORKFLOW CONDITIONS TO MATCH, we can set up the conditions to be triggered.

Use Add Items button to enter the condition

In the example we are trying to execute, we will use the Field “Total” (which is the PO total) as the workflow should trigger only if the Total Value of the PO is greater than 50,000.

Next, we can mention the exact condition in the “Has” Column – Greater than and in the “Value” column, enter 50,000. This will make sure that the condition to trigger the workflow is when the Total Value of PO is greater than 50000/-

In the next tab – “SETUP WORKFLOW ACTIONS TO TRIGGER” - we have to define what is the action to be done if the condition matches.

In this example, we are looking to send an Approval notification to the manager if the PO value is more than 50000 who can then approve or reject the request.

Once again, use Add items to select the appropriate “action type”.

The “Action Template” Column defines the Templates that can be used to send the Approval request. Please see below the steps to create an Email Template. – “How to create an Email Template?

The “User type” can be based on the specific user name or a role.

Please see the section  How to create a User Role? , where we have created a user role “PO Special Approval” and that has been assigned in the below screenshot in the workflow action.  

In the below-given screenshot, we have tried a “Rejection” action for the same example.

Use ADD Items to select the “Deny with error” action. You could use the “Notify Msg” column to enter the Error message to be shown when the PO created is more than 50000. 

    How to create a User Role?

In the above example, To approve all the Purchase orders that have a value above 50000, we could create a user role “PO Special Approver” and could assign it to the user (maybe all the managers in the Sales department) and the notification could go to all of the manager/s and anyone could approve.

To create a User role, User Management>>Manage User Role

You could define the name of the role in this form.

Once a ROLE is created, we could assign the role to any user by clicking User Management >> Manage User Accounts.

From the available users, choose the user for whom the ROLE has to be assigned.

In the below screenshot, The Employee “Ibrahim” is assigned the role that we created and the employee would get the notifications if any PO created more than 50000 and he would be able to approve.

How to create an Email Template?

To create an Email Template to be used in the Workflows, click Email Manager>> Email Templates

Create an Email template as given in the below screenshot,  that you could use in the Workflow Configuration.

The first section in the form is “Enter Template Name and Select LayOut “ where you could define the name of the template to be created.

The Next section “Email Transactions”-

The General type is used when we use the templates in Workflow.  In this case, since we are generating a template for the workflow, we have selected the ‘General’ type.

The next section “Email Settings Section”

• Active field is set to  YES when the template is ready to be used and it can be set to NO when you are drafting or not using the template.
• Enable Replies field lets you chose to enable replies or not, to the mail created since these emails are automated.
• Open Tracking field can be set to YES when you require reports on if the mail was viewed and who has viewed etc., from the “Activity Log” section in the form. In this case the PO form.

The next section is the “Select the Form and Form Variables”

• Select form – choose the form from where the Email is to be created.
• Choose form variables- This dropdown field lists all the variables/fields in the selected form. You can choose those variables which you would require and those variables will be listed in the Email content tab. In this case, we have selected “ PO ID”, “ Supplier name” and the “Total Amount of the PO”.

In the next section “Enter the Email Contents” we could define the Email content with the chosen form variables.

Whenever an Email is generated from a Purchase order, the Email content will pick up the particular PO Id created, the Supplier name, and the total amount of the PO, and an Email will be sent based on the Workflow condition.