A workflow is the heart of a TrakIT setup. It decides which events your team records, which data they fill in, which KPIs are measured and what happens automatically along the way. Until now, building one meant starting from an empty definition, and understanding an existing one meant opening its events and data fields one at a time.
Two new pages change both ends of that. The Workflow Wizard gives you a complete workflow in a few minutes. Workflow Analysis lays out any workflow, new or ten years old, on a single page.
Workflow Wizard: a working workflow in five steps
Open Admin > Workflow Definitions and select Create with Wizard. The wizard asks five things.
- Type. Freight forwarding, or transport and depot. Here you also choose the language of the event and data names: English, French or Spanish.
- Kind. Eleven templates to start from:
- Freight forwarding: Sea Import, Sea Export, Air Import, Air Export, Transit Import, Transit Export, Customs Clearance Only.
- Transport and depot: Road Transport, Cross-border Trucking, Depot / Container Yard, Warehousing.
- Scope. A short list of on/off questions about what the work includes. Does the cargo move in containers? Do you handle customs clearance? Do you deliver by truck? Each answer adds or removes a group of events and data fields. Three more switches add standard KPIs, a document checklist, and customer visibility of the main milestones.
- Details. Name, code, group, responsible company, the two places that decide who gets access, and optionally a base currency.
- Preview. Everything the wizard is about to create, in one list.
The preview is where you make it yours
Nothing is saved until you select Create Workflow, so the preview is the place to adjust. You can:
- leave out any event, data field, KPI or document by clearing its checkbox,
- rename new items or add a suffix,
- drag rows into the order your team works in,
- change the target hours of each KPI.
It fits into the setup you already have
Every event and data field in TrakIT uses a master event or master data field, shared by all your workflows. The wizard looks for a master with the same name and data type and uses it when it finds one. It adds a new master only when none exists, and it never renames or changes an existing one. Your other workflows, and the reports that run across them, are not affected.
Created inactive, on purpose
The new workflow is created inactive, so nobody can open jobs on it before you have looked it over. The wizard creates everything together or nothing at all; there is no half-built workflow to clean up.
Treat the result as a starting point. The wizard does not add services, job types, default accounts, forms, actions and notifications, or computed fields. Those depend on how your company works, and you add them on the workflow page as before. When you are satisfied, tick Active in the workflow's settings.
Anyone whose role has Create on Workflow Definitions can use the wizard.
Workflow Analysis: the whole workflow on one page
A workflow that has been in use for a few years collects a lot: validations, actions that set other fields, KPIs, forms, links to other workflows. Each piece is easy to find when you know where to look. Seeing how they fit together was the hard part.
Open a workflow from Admin > Workflow Definitions and select the flow chart icon at the top. Workflow Analysis opens in a new tab.
One line per step
Every event and data field is one compact line, in order, with its number, name, code and kind: blue for events, green for data, purple for computed data. On the same line, short labels show what surrounds the step:
- what feeds it from outside the workflow, such as master data, geofences and yard moves,
- its settings, such as a validation, a KPI or a form,
- the steps it requires, and the steps that set it,
- its actions, with an arrow and a step number where an action sets another step.
Select a line to open it and read each item in full, including when each action runs and what it does. Select a reference to another step and the page takes you there.
Tabs for the rest
- Linked workflows: the other workflows this one creates work orders in or links to.
- Rules: custom checks and actions that apply when a work order is created, closed and so on.
- Issues found: things worth checking, such as an action that sets a step that no longer exists, or automation with no description.
That last tab is worth a visit for every workflow you rely on.
Find what you need
- Search by name or code across every tab.
- Choose a service to see only the steps that apply to it.
- Actions only shows just the steps that do something automatically.
- Show all fields brings back the data fields that take no part in the automation, which are hidden by default to keep the chart short.
Take it with you
PDF Preview opens the complete chart as a PDF on A3 landscape pages, with every step in full, followed by the linked workflows, rules and issues. It is useful for a process review, for training new staff, or for agreeing on a change before anyone makes it.
The page is read-only. Nothing can be changed from it, so it is safe to explore. Each item has a link to the screen where it is configured, for when you do want to change something.
Better together
The two pages work well as a pair:
- Create a workflow with the wizard.
- Add your services, forms and actions on the workflow page.
- Open Workflow Analysis to check the result from start to finish, and look at Issues found.
- Make the workflow active.
And for the workflows you already run, Workflow Analysis is the quickest way to see what they really do today.
Both pages are in the current release of TrakIT. Step-by-step help is at docs.trakit.in: see Workflow Wizard and Workflow Analysis under Administration.
