Starting and modifying business processes

Start a business process for an entity in the Business Processes tab on the Contacts workspace when you want to record or update their information using a Process Management form with a defined series of questions and an approval workflow or just an approval workflow without a form.

You choose the business process that you want to initiate from a list of available business processes. Select the business process that matches the workflow you want to use with your entity.

When you start a business process, the associated entity is locked. You can add activities to a locked item but cannot edit other properties of the item.

All users with access to an entity can request approval for a change to that entity. These Approval Requestor s create approval requests and submit them for approval to approvers who approve or reject the changes. An Approval Approver is a user who is responsible for either approving or rejecting the request. Users who are Approval Approvers must be assigned privileges by your system administrator before they can approve or reject requests.

Searching and filtering the data table

In the Business Processes tab, you can use the text search field and filter chips to find business process records. NexJ provides the following filter chips that enable you to find records quickly that match the filter criteria:

• Effective Date
  Select an operator and a date.
• Outcome
  Select an operator and an action item.
• Status
  Select an operator and a state.

To add additional filter chips, click the Filter options button

Adding a business process

To start a business process for entities, navigate to the Contacts workspace and select the entity for whom you want to start a business process. Click the Business Processes tab, click the Add button

Tab	Field	Description	Required
Detail	Assign To	Assign the business process to any additional users whom you want to complete it. Info By default, the business process is assigned to the user who started it.	No
	Due	Due date for the business process. Info The due date is for reference. It does not affect when you can fill out or submit the business process.	No
	Priority	The importance of the business process.	Yes
	Reminder	Set a reminder when you want the assigned users to receive a reminder to complete the business process.	No
	Start	Start date for the business process. Info The start date is for reference. It does not prevent you from filling out the business process prior to the specified date.	No
Related	Not applicable	Associate the business process to any desired opportunity, products, or service request. In the Follow-ups area, add follow-up schedule items, tasks, and documents that you want to assign when the business process is started.	Not applicable
Security	Public/Private/Group	Specify who you want the business process to be visible to. For example, select Public, Group, or Private. For more information about applying security, see Security settings for objects in NexJ CRM.	No
Steps	Not applicable	Approval steps in a business process that determine how a form can be approved or rejected. These steps have been created by the administrator who defined the business process and created the related business process template. The Future Steps data table displays approval steps that have not started yet. You can only modify steps that display in the Assigned Steps data table after you add the business process.	No

A record is created in the data table in the Business Processes tab for the entity which has the business process. The record contains approval steps and optionally, a Process Management form.

You can sort the data table by clicking Sort By

in the data table toolbar and selecting the column you would like to sort by. For more information, see Sorting data tables by columns. You can also change the columns that display in the data table by clicking Select columns

in the data table toolbar and selecting the required columns.

If you have created an approval request for an entity that does not involve filling in a Process Management form, the first step in the approval is automatically started and the request is assigned to the Approval Approver based on the approval steps. The Approval Approver may also be notified if the process is configured to send a notification to the Approval Approver.

If you have created an approval request for an entity that does involve a Process Management form, then at this point, the business process is initiated but not yet underway. To run the business process for a Process Management form, you must fill out its form, then submit it for approval.

Modifying business processes

Modify a business process when you want to change details such as who it is assigned to or what additional activities need to be performed.

You can modify a business process only before it is submitted. Submitted business processes cannot be modified because they provide an audit trail and a historical record of updates to your entity, opportunity, or service request records.

If you have not yet submitted a business process, you can make changes to its details, steps, associations, follow-ups, and security settings. To modify it, you can choose one of the following methods:

• Click on the record link in the Description column in the data table in the Business Processes tab. In the banner, click the More Actions button

  

  and select Edit to modify the business process.
• Select the record in the data table in the Business Processes tab and click the Edit button 

  

  .

Filtering the audit trail

NexJ CRM retains a history of actions that users have performed on records in the system. When you complete an action, such as viewing or modifying a business process, the action is logged in the record's audit trail. Users with the appropriate privileges can view the history and details of these actions in a record's Audit Trail tab.

You can filter the data table on the Audit Trail tab to display specific event records.

NexJ provides the following filter chips that you can use to filter the audit trail:

• Action
  Select an operator and an audit action; for example, Read or Create a new object.
• Date
  Select an operator and a date.
• User
  Select an operator and the required user or users.

To add filter chips, click the Filter options button

In the data table, select the action whose details you want to view. Depending on the type of action, additional details might be available. The details for the selected action display in the data table at the bottom of the tab. Each line represents a field that was updated as part of the action. The field's name, old value, and new value are displayed. If a field did not have a value originally, the value in the Old Value column will be blank.

To change which columns display in the data tables, click the Select columns button

Deleting business processes

Delete outstanding business processes that you do not want to keep. When you delete a business process, any information that was recorded in the form is discarded. If you have an outstanding business process that you will not complete, you might want to delete it so that you or another user assigned to the business process does not accidentally submit it.

You can delete a business process only before it is submitted. Submitted business processes cannot be deleted because they provide an audit trail and a historical record of updates to your entity records.

To delete a business process, select a business process record in the data table in the Business Processes tab and click the Delete button