As the Systems Ad­min­is­tra­tor in the Com­mis­sioner of the Revenue’s Office, I de­signed and im­ple­mented the de­part­ment’s work­flows myself. (The IT de­part­ment at Hanover County only pro­vides support.) Here are some of my strate­gies for plan­ning, de­sign­ing and im­ple­ment­ing your very first Laser­fiche Work­flow.

I know it can seem scary, but you can do it!

Before you start de­sign­ing

1. Sit down and make a list of ideas of processes within your de­part­ment or or­ga­ni­za­tion that you would like to au­to­mate. Re­mem­ber to start simple.

“Some­times the small work­flow is as im­por­tant as the big, flashy one.”Our first work­flow dealt with ob­tain­ing Statu­tory As­sess­ment Work­sheets, routing them to man­agers for ap­proval and then routing them to the records folders for storage and re­ten­tion.

2. De­ter­mine the goal of your work­flow. Your goal should be spe­cific. In my case, it was, “I would like to elim­i­nate re­dun­dant print­ing of Statu­tory As­sess­ment Work­sheets.” Ask your­self if you are au­tomat­ing a process or trying to solve a problem.

• If you see or ex­pe­ri­ence an actual break­down in the ef­fi­ciency of the current process, then you should first solve the problem before au­tomat­ing the process.

3. Do your re­search and take ad­van­tage of the mul­ti­tude of re­sources avail­able to all Laser­fiche users:

• The Capture Work­flow Cer­ti­fied Pro­fes­sional Program course taught me how to ap­proach plan­ning, di­a­gram­ming and de­sign­ing my work­flows.
• The many white papers avail­able on the Support Site provide spe­cific details on various aspects of the work­flow design process.
• Your VAR is also an ex­cel­lent re­source. I put my VAR on speed dial and called them when­ever I ran into prob­lems or lost my con­fi­dence.

Diagram your process

Once you’ve de­ter­mined the process and the goal and ed­u­cated your­self on work­flow design, it is time to ac­tu­ally diagram the process.

1. Gather all of the stake­hold­ers in one place and come up with a diagram of how the busi­ness process should look. When de­sign­ing my first work­flow, I invited the man­agers who are re­spon­si­ble for ap­prov­ing the Statu­tory As­sess­ment Work­sheets as well as the di­vi­sion manager to join me. I drew out the whole process on a piece of paper and we dis­cussed all of the de­tailed steps to­gether, going into such specifics as how the manager would prefer to approve the work­sheets (with a tem­plate field or a per­sonal stamp).
2. Re­mem­ber that it is ok to change or revise current processes in order to make your work­flows as ef­fi­cient as pos­si­ble. Some­times you may think that the process works one way, but in reality, there are certain steps you may have skipped.                                                                                                                                                                         “Time spent di­a­gram­ming upfront will more than pay itself back later.”
3. It is im­por­tant that you do not skimp on the plan­ning phase. The more you put into the actual design of the session, the better the end result. When con­struct­ing my work­flows, I spend more time plan­ning than ac­tu­ally de­sign­ing.

Design the work­flow

Once you have fi­nal­ized your actual diagram and gone through as many changes as nec­es­sary, it is time to stat de­sign­ing your actual work­flow.

Laser­fiche Work­flow in­cludes a mul­ti­tude of pre-de­signed, user-friendly ac­tiv­i­ties. Here are some things to keep in mind when de­sign­ing your work­flow:

• You must have Work­flow De­signer ac­tu­ally in­stalled on your com­puter or on the com­puter where you want to design the work­flow.
• It is a best prac­tice to create a user account for Laser­fiche Work­flow in the Ad­min­is­tra­tion Console. This user will be the one per­form­ing all of the au­to­mated tasks when the work­flows ac­tu­ally run.

One of the most im­por­tant parts of de­sign­ing work­flows is spec­i­fy­ing the start­ing rules—what con­di­tions will invoke the work­flow. When setting up your start­ing rules, make sure to follow these guide­lines:

• Exclude the Work­flow user from being able to ini­ti­ate work­flows in order to prevent “runaway work­flows” – work­flows that that keep ini­ti­at­ing them­selves in an endless loop.
• Make the entry type (doc­u­ment, folder, etc.) and path as spe­cific as pos­si­ble in order to prevent the work­flow from start­ing when you do not want it to.

Re­mem­ber, if you start de­sign­ing and lose your con­fi­dence, just call your VAR for help. I ac­tu­ally hired my VAR to come and sit with me for the day while I de­signed my first work­flow. Just having him there boosted my con­fi­dence.

• Design as much as you want since you can always delete and start over.
• Don’t be afraid to publish what you’ve de­signed. You must first publish the work­flow before cre­at­ing the start­ing rule.

The most im­por­tant thing to re­mem­ber is:

“Test and test again—even VARs need a few tries to get things working 100%.”  

I had to test my first work­flow at least 15 times before I got it to work exactly as I wanted. You can create sample doc­u­ments and then run them through the work­flow as you are de­sign­ing it to make sure that the work­flow func­tions as ex­pected. It is much safer to test on sample doc­u­ments than actual live data.

Now that you’ve com­pleted your first work­flow

Unveil your first work­flow to your users, as well as your boss. Make sure you don’t tell them that it wasn’t that hard to create.

• Be pre­pared to revise this work­flow as needed. Simply make the changes you want in the Laser­fiche Work­flow De­signer and re­pub­lish until you are fully sat­is­fied. After my first work­flow went live, I had to revise some of the e-mail ac­tiv­i­ties because, after seeing the actual process in action, we de­ter­mined that they could be op­ti­mized.
• Pat your­self on the back and move on to the next one! Come up with a list of processes you want to au­to­mate and tackle them one by one.