Workflows

Workflows


The workflows module breaks down your planning cycle into a series of actionable tasks that can be viewed by table or timeline.  
  1. Add, edit, and delete plans, while tracking their completion percentage. 
  2. Add, edit, delete, and mark complete user tasks. 
  3. Schedule automatic actions like opening and closing edit windows. 
  4. Configure non-working days that affect all plans. 
  5. Roll-forward plans and tasks into the next planning cycle. 

Understanding Plans and Tasks

The process of supply chain management relies on creating and managing plans consistently. 

Most commonly, supply chain planning is thought of as the combination of “demand planning” (estimating what customer demand will be in the future) and “supply planning” (planning the production and procurement of material to meet future demand). 

Arkieva provides some basic templates for managing the supply chain. These are starting points and you can customize them to your situation by adding or deleting tasks. The default templates include: 
  1. Demand Planning 
  2. Supply Planning 
  3. Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP)

Workflow Tasks

In Arkieva, tasks are the building blocks of the supply chain management process and represent the actions that need to be taken by your team. Tasks are assigned to specific users, grouped by module, and always exist as the child of a specific plan.

View Tasks

To view a task, first click on the task’s parent plan, which expands to show the tasks at an aggregate view, grouped by module. Next, click on a module, which expands to show the individual tasks. You’ll notice that the table rows extend into the timeline view to the right, where tasks are ordered chronologically according to their start and end dates. This behavior similarly extends to the bottom two quadrants of the screen, where tasks are grouped by the user they are assigned to, in both the table and timeline views.












Adding New Task

Add a new task by clicking the Add New button and selecting New Task from the dropdown. 





The New Task drawer will slide out; fill out the appropriate information to create a new task for yourself or your team. 

Setting the Effort to Zero (0) will set the action to run on schedule; meaning setting the effort as 0 for a scheduled task will set the the milestone task as achieved.  Example, if a task is scheduled to run every day at 5 am for 10 days, if on the 5th day the task fails, the task will continue to run for the next 5 days and then it will mark the task as 100% completed - even though the action failed the work flow UI won’t reflect that. To counter this, set notifications to automatically notify you when an action fails.





New Task
  1. Parent Process: Select Process from dropdown.
  2. Task Group: Select Task Group from dropdown.
  3. Name: Name the new Task. 
  4. Navigation Link: Paste optional URL to module associated with the new Task.
  5. Start Date: Select Start Date of the new task from the Calendar. 
  6. Effort (Days): Type in the number of days this task will need to be completed.
  7. Priority: Select the priority for the task (High, Medium, or Low ) from the dropdown. 
  8. Progress: Progress of the task in percentage. value.
  9. Task Responsible: Select from the dropdown who is responsible for completing the task. 

Show Advanced Options
  1. Task Accountability: Select from the dropdown who is accountable for overseeing completion of the task.
  2. Task Participants: Select additional people who are responsible for the task completion.
  3. Details: Type an explanation of the task. 
  4. Actions: Select from the dropdown actions required for completion of the task. These Actions are baked into the application; use the Details section for any other actions needed to complete the task that are not included in the Actions dropdown. Created group actions (collection of actions) can be created and ran ad hoc. 

Right-click Task options Editing

Right-click a task for additional options: Mark Complete/Mark Incomplete, Actions, Edit, Add Task, Convert to Milestone, View Details, and Delete. 










Mark Complete/Mark Incomplete a Task
When a task is deemed complete, you can right-click the task and select Mark Complete. This will change the % Done to 100%, and the Status to Completed. 




Note that marking a task as completed will change the percentage of of the parent plans accordingly. 





Also note that right-clicking a completed task will change the option to Mark Incomplete. This revert the % Done to 0% and the Status.




Edit Task a Task
To edit a task, right-click the task and select Edit. The Edit Task drawer will slide open. Make the required edits, then click Update Task to save those edits. 







Actions
Arkieva integrates the clustering of actions with dependencies into Workflow. Workflow tasks can be created with dependencies between tasks. Task completion is then monitored, as the next task will start only after the completion of the previous task.










Add Task
You can add a new task above or below the right-clicked task. Select Add Task, then Task above, or Task below to slide out the New Task drawer. Fill out the New Task requirements, then click Create New Task. 




Converting to Milestones
A milestone normally marks the completion of a task or sub-process. It is usually tied to some action that needs to be taken when it is reached. To convert a task to a milestone, select Convert to Milestone from the task’s right-click menu.







View Details
To view the details of the task, Right-click and select View Details or click the View Details button located to the right of the task. 




A Details popup window will show the Priority, Effort, and description of the Task. 





Delete Task
Right-click a task and select Delete to remove the task from the plan. 
Warning: Be sure you want to remove the task - if the task was deleted by mistake, you will need to manually recreate the task again, there is no recovery option.




Settings: Configuring Planning Cycle

By default, Arkieva operates on a monthly planning cycle, with plans repeating at the beginning of every month. However, you can accommodate any planning cycle by editing, adding, or deleting tasks. 

At times, it may be necessary to denote certain days as “nonworking days” which affect all plans.  Each task has an effort associated with it, and the length of the task is automatically extended by the non-working days. For example, if a 2-day task starts on Friday, and Saturday and Sunday are designated non-working, the task will automatically be extended through Monday. All nonworking days within your planning cycle are denoted by a grey column within the timeline view. 

To edit the nonworking days, click the Settings button in the toolbar. The Workflow Settings drawer will slide out.




There are three ways to add nonworking days to the Calendar: Add individual days to the Calendar, Block off specific days of the week as Nonworking Days, and Regional Holidays. 

Select a day on the calendar and click Add to block off that specific day as a nonworking day. You can type an optional description first before clicking Add. 





The nonworking day will be highlighted in red on the calendar. Select the day and click remove to revert the nonworking day to a working day. 





Secondly, you can check of specific days to be nonworking days throughout the calendar. For example, Saturday and Sunday. These days will be grayed out in the calendar.  








Lastly observed holidays by country can be marked as nonworking days.

Click Add Regional Holidays, the select the country.











Next, go back to the Workflow Settings drawer and click Edit on the country selected. Here you will see all the country's holidays toggled on by default. 








Roll Back Period View

You can view a previous period workflow to compare to your current workflow by using the Select Date calendar dropdown. The previous workflow is read only. To go back to the current workflow, select that date from the dropdown calendar. Warning: Do not go back to the previous workflow without completing the current workflow, this will wipe out the current workflow and you will not be able to view it again. 













Roll Forward 

Planning is a continuous activity. Once a plan is completed, you can start the next cycle by rolling forward the plan to a new start date. The dates of previous tasks and activities are automatically reset to reflect the new planning cycle. 





Know that a roll forward cannot be undone, as shown by the warning below.





If selecting a roll forward date more than a month into the future, a confirmation popup will show asking you again if you would like to make this roll forward action. 





Roll Forward Based On Planning Period Change Strategy

When the planning period changes based on strategy and/or user action, the workflow will perform a Roll Forward operation.



From the Planning Horizon Strategy dropdown, select Today,  Increment by 1 day, or Start of the Month to have access to the Roll-forward workflow processes based on horizon strategy dropdown.




From the dropdown, select a strategy or multiple strategies. 





Then under the Change schedule section, you can select an Update Frequency from the dropdown to create an automatic roll forward update to occur. 






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