A workflow is a structured sequence of steps to perform a task or process from start to finish. It defines the order of actions, responsibilities, and decision points.

What is workflow management?

Workflow management is the practice of designing, automating, and optimizing workflows within organizations and managing their interdependencies.

What is a Workflow Management System?

A Workflow Management System (WMS) is software that enables you to design, automate, manage, and optimize workflows. Its purpose is to make processes more efficient, transparent, and consistent.

Workflows

What are Workflows?

A workflow is a structured set of steps to run a specific process and achieve an objective. Organizations use workflows to improve efficiency and organize work more effectively. With workflows, we model business processes as a sequence of steps, decision rules, roles, and responsibilities. It also serves as a starting point for service automation, where processes are progressively digitized. In this article, we explain the purpose and use of workflows and how we apply workflows within the service automation of our HelloID IAM management processes.

What do Workflows Entail?

Let us start with a concrete example of such a workflow. How do you organize the ordering and delivery of new laptops for employees within a company? Such a workflow will look roughly as follows:

Request by an employee or manager for a laptop, including specifications, to the IT or procurement department.
Review of the request by the IT department and/or the manager, including a budget check.
Ordering by the IT or procurement department from a supplier or from internal stock. The expected delivery date is then communicated back to the user.
IT receives the laptop and installs the operating system, business software, and security settings, including user account(s) and network access.
The laptop is handed over to the employee, including instructions on use, security, and maintenance.
The employee tests and accepts the laptop. The request is then closed, the laptop is registered in the asset management system, and management begins.

This is a relatively simple purchasing and delivery process, yet even then, the workflow above is a major simplification. To accurately describe the process, we would need to detail further the workflow, including intermediate steps, decision points, and exceptions. Specifications and budget can differ by role type and department, and the same applies to the software that must be installed. Once all details are incorporated, the result is a complete workflow that describes the process from A to Z.

Why are Workflows Important?

A detailed workflow provides instructions for staff to perform the process manually. It also provides a starting point for digitizing the process. A well-designed workflow delivers only benefits:

Good workflows help you design processes that are faster and more efficient, and ensure consistent execution.
Workflows help improve collaboration within the organization. The workflow provides a clear division of tasks and responsibilities.
A good workflow prevents errors. Not only because the work process itself is clear, but also because you can build in the right control points.
Good workflows support compliance by enabling you to quickly and transparently demonstrate how your processes are executed during audits.

In short, a workflow helps you execute your processes properly, efficiently, and traceably, and digitize them as needed.

How Do We Use Workflows Within HelloID?

In HelloID, workflows play a key role in streamlining and automating individual user requests. In general, organizations can automatically manage about 80% of all accounts and access rights based on roles, departments, and other employee attributes. Within HelloID, we do this with the Provisioning module.

The remaining 20% involves individual exceptions. People may need an additional license or data folder for their work. They may also need access to a project mailbox or want to update their email details. For these cases, we use the Service Automation module, which offers several options. With helpdesk delegation, each request is still reviewed manually and then executed by a helpdesk employee or delegated to a manager or a key user. In addition, HelloID provides a self-service portal where end users can submit requests directly and have them handled automatically.

Self-service is ideal, but as an organization, you still want to stay in control. This means you still want to be able to evaluate a self-service user request. Does the person’s manager consider it necessary for the user to receive the relevant license or access rights, and does the request align with policy? Is it an expensive license? Does it fit the budget, or are we limited to a small number of licenses?

That is why our self-service functionality supports adding and configuring verification workflows. HelloID provides several baseline workflows that can be customized or extended as needed. In these self-service workflows, you can configure the following, among other items:

How is the review conducted? This can occur fully automatically based on configured criteria. Still, the request can also be routed to the appropriate staff member, who can process it via email with a response button or through the HelloID user interface.
Who evaluates the request? The standard option is for a product owner and/or a manager to evaluate a request. However, through a special filter, you can also add other employees as reviewers. For example, people with a specific role or working in a particular department.
What is the division of roles in the review? Must every stakeholder approve the request, and in what order? Or is approval from one of the reviewers sufficient? And what do we do if someone does not respond in time?

The key point is that, for the HelloID self-service portal, we can configure a dedicated approval workflow for each request type. With HelloID workflows, we ensure that even when using self-service, we remain fully in control.

Want to Learn More About Self-Service Workflows?

Want to know more about using workflows within the self-service portal of our HelloID Service Automation module? The Service Automation page on our site provides a complete view of the functionality and options.

Workflows with IAM