00:01My name is Tope Bello and with me here today is Kevin Bedel.

00:05We will be going over an introductory section…session for ArcGIS Workflow Manager.

00:11And is everyone here…as I believe everyone here has heard of the product. You have a brief idea of what the product does.

00:21The goal today is to just kind of show you guys some of the key features within Workflow Manager with some demos.

00:30So, we're going to start off presenting you with the framework of ArcGIS Workflow Manager…

00:38…and show you how you can actually use this with your business processes, and we'll sprinkle in demonstrations.

00:47There's quite an interesting form I want to go with today, is to actually entertain a few questions after every demo…

00:56…just that way if people have questions, we don't want you to forget to ask them…

01:01…but we'll still have room for questions at the end of the session.

01:09So the topics we're going to be looking at today, we're going to be looking at the introduction to Workflow Manager.

01:15We're going to define workflows. You're going to see Kevin define workflows.

01:20I'll talk a little bit about that prior to the demo and also see how you execute these workflows.

01:25We'll see how you can integrate your workflows with ArcGIS…

01:29…because you already have a…your business processes defined within your organization.

01:34I want to show you how you can use Workflow Manager to actually integrate your workflows with ArcGIS.

01:43Lastly, we'll show you the tracking and reporting piece of the software and how we do that within Workflow Manager.

01:52So what exactly is Workflow Manager? It's an enterprise-wide…it's an enterprise solution.

01:59It's an enterprise workflow management application that allows you to integrate your GIS and your non-GIS work.

02:06It basically provides you with a framework that plugs into existing systems within your organization…

02:12…or plugs your business processes into our workflow management system.

02:21ArcGIS Workflow Manager is an extension of ArcGIS, and I'll talk a little bit about two different flavors that we have…

02:28…because as you find better ways to do some of the activities that you do within your organization…

02:30…flavors being Server and Desktop, in a moment.

02:33It's basically a product that allows you to define your business processes.

02:38It allows you to manage your workflows.

02:40It allows you to execute your workflows. It allows you to keep track of your work.

02:45In doing all of this, it leaves room for process improvement…

02:53…you may want to modify your workflows to kind of address those things.

03:00We'll show you how you do that in a little bit in our demo here.

03:06So right at the heart of the workflow management system is a geodatabase.

03:10This is an SDE database that contains the Workflow Manager system tables.

03:15The system tables get created when you run the postinstall utility that we provide with the product…

03:22…and the Desktop piece of it interacts with this repository…

03:27…so your workflow management tables or your workflow management...

03:32…sorry, your workflows basically reside in the Workflow Manager geodatabase.

03:37We interact with it via the Administrator or the application. The Administrator is where you define these workflows.

03:44Basically you define…you model your processes into Workflow Manager workflows…

03:50…and the application is where your end users go in and actually execute their workflows.

03:55The last piece there is a developer kit for those of you that want to extend the Workflow Manager capabilities.

04:02We do have an SDK and a developer kit that allows you to create more robust steps…

04:09…we'll talk about that later, or modify the look and feel of the application.

04:14The Server piece of it, we have our APIs, SOAP and REST API, allows you to actually create either web applications…

04:23…or integrate this workflow management system with other systems…

04:27…by communicating via…with some of these services.

04:33We do provide two samples, sample web viewers.

04:38They're currently available. The Flex Viewer is part of your installs when you get this.

04:43We have a JavaScript version too, which is also available on our Resource Center…

04:48…and I'll, you know, give you all this information as a last slide later on.

04:53So the common question we hear is, Why would I use Workflow Manager Server versus Desktop?

04:59Or what do I need to use Server for and what do I need to use Desktop for?

05:03Well, Server allows you to leverage your investment across your organization.

05:08It exposes the GIS capabilities to your non-GIS…I'm sorry.

05:12It exposes the Workflow Manager capabilities to your non-GIS users.

05:16So your GIS department and the other departments within your organization…

05:20…that contribute to the GIS work, can basically interact with the same system.

05:27It provides a way for you to, you know, get feedback from your customers, maybe by, you know…

05:32…creating work for you or people within the GIS department…

05:37…and they can view status of their work progress real time.

05:43It also plugs into existing applications, and examples of applications I have up here are, you know…

05:48…Maximo, SAP, and other in-house systems that you've developed.

05:53A lot of you probably already have some form of mechanism of tracking your workflows.

05:59Workflow Manager Server provides you a framework where you can easily plug these existing systems in.

06:12So I'm going to hop right into defining workflows or processes within Workflow Manager.

06:18So I guess the key thing there is, how do I model this business process.

06:22A lot of people here, we talk about workflows, we talk about steps, we talk about activities.

06:29Well, we're going to cover that in detail in this section. There's basically three things you need to do.

06:36The first thing there is you need to define the steps.

06:39These steps are basically activities that make up a certain project, right?

06:44A project could have multiple activities that require to happen…

06:47…for that entire project to be completed or task to be completed.

06:51When you define the steps, you drag and drop them into a canvas and you connect the steps together.

06:58Or you can then update the step properties to give it more intelligent behavior.

07:05An example of a workflow process, I guess, or of a business process, is map creation.

07:11Map creation, for example, may require you to go out and collect data, prepare the data…

07:17…and create a map document to review that the contents of your data…

07:20…is what you really want it to be before generating maybe a PDF output of a map. This is just an example.

07:30These simple activities like I have up here could be translated into what we call step types. Okay?

07:38So you basically define these activities. These are things that you need to do within your organization…

07:42…or within a certain workflow and you break them down into step types.

07:47They're translated into step types and they reside in the Workflow Manager system tables in the Administrator.

07:54And once you've defined your step types, you basically grab them and drop them in a canvas.

07:59For those of you that are familiar with ModelBuilder, it's a similar experience.

08:04You grab a tool, you drag it into a canvas, and you plug in data elements to it.

08:09With Workflow Manager, you drag a step type into the workflow and it becomes a step…

08:14…it becomes an instance of that step type. So you're just using a copy of it.

08:18And now you connect the step types together with what we call paths.

08:25These step types, sorry, these paths allow you to actually…

08:29…you can actually model more intelligent behavior into your workflow process, so you can have things like decision points…

08:37…or you can automatically assign a certain piece of your workflow to a particular group of users.

08:43An example I have up here, I'm basically making sure that when that workflow step of Perform Quality Check is reached…

08:50…this job gets routed to my quality assurance team.

08:53I also have it set up so that the status of the job shows up as quality assurance.

08:58And you'll see where all of this gets displayed in a second when we show you the demo.

09:02Finally, I have a percentage completion so that when that step is done…

09:06…my entire workflow is about 75 percent complete.

09:10All of these are fully configurable and controlled based on your business processes.

09:16What I'm going to do now is turn it over to Kevin to just show us how we'd define a simple workflow.

09:22Okay.

09:24Thanks, Tope.

09:25So throughout the demonstrations today, does this seem a little…

09:32Alright, throughout the demonstrations today, we're going to look at a scenario involving an organization…

09:38…that is tasked with preserving the endangered Tahoe yellow cress…

09:42…which is a plant that grows along the shores of Lake Tahoe.

09:47And throughout this scenario, we're going to focus on one particular workflow…

09:52…and that workflow consists of a developer making a request to have a new development approved.

10:00And we already have that workflow defined in our system here, so I have the Workflow Manager Administrator open…

10:09…and I can go to my Workflows folder and I can see this Request for Approval workflow.

10:15So I'm going to begin to edit that. But we want to make some changes to this.

10:19We've determined that we can improve our business process by making some updates to our workflow…

10:25…so we're going to go ahead and do that.

10:29So these type of activities that I'm doing here in the Administrator are usually performed by one or a couple of people…

10:37…within your organization that are tasked with managing your Workflow Manager system.

10:43So we're going to start off by looking at this from their point of view.

10:49So our existing workflow, I can see it in the canvas here, and right now it consists of the…

10:56…GIS analyst will receive a request from the developer. They will then acknowledge receipt of that request.

11:04They'll then go out into the field and collect some GPS data, load that into their enterprise geodatabase…

11:13…create a version within their enterprise geodatabase, which will be used when they perform analysis.

11:20Finally, they will come up with some recommendations based on that analysis…

11:25…let the developer know what their recommendation is, and then this request can be marked as resolved.

11:33So we want to make some improvements to this process, because, right now…

11:38…the developer may submit a request in an area that our organization knows that Tahoe yellow cress cannot grow…

11:47…and so we don't need to go out into the field and look for instances of the plant in that case.

11:52We can just let the developer know that it is…meets our approval process.

11:59So I'm going to delete the Acknowledge Receipt path within our workflow and we're going to add a new step to our workflow.

12:07It's already been defined as a step type within our system, so I can find our Location Analysis step type here in the library…

12:15…on the left-hand side, and drag that into our workflow canvas.

12:20I can then resize or change the background color just to give this nicer look to the workflow…

12:29…and I can then begin to connect it to the remaining steps.

12:34So I want this step to occur after the GIS analyst has acknowledged receipt…

12:40…and then depending on the output of this location analysis, we'll either continue with collecting GPS points…

12:49…or we can go directly to notifying the developer that they are able to proceed.

12:56So I can rearrange my steps here just to make them look a little neater…

13:00…and I'm now going to begin to set the properties of my path to model that condition that I described.

13:08So if I looked at the documentation of the Location Analysis step…

13:12…I would know that a return code of 1 means that the area that the developer has requested to create their development in…

13:22…does overlap the Tahoe yellow cress habitat, so in that case we need to go out and collect our GPS points.

13:31But if that step returns 2, there is no intersection and we can move directly to notifying the developer.

13:40I also want to set some properties on the step itself here.

13:44In this case, I don't want to allow the location analysis to be skipped, so I will turn that off…

13:51…and I will proceed directly to the next step after this location analysis has been completed.

13:59I can also set the Percent Complete to say that the overall workflow is 5 percent complete…

14:06…after the location analysis has been performed. So I'll go ahead and accept those changes.

14:13And there's one additional step that I want to add to my workflow here, which is a Prepare step.

14:18Again, I have it as a step in my step type library here, so I can just drag it in to add my new step…

14:25…and I want this to be the first step in my workflow here.

14:29And I'm adding this so that the developer has a chance to fill out some additional information…

14:37…before they submit this to the GIS analyst.

14:40And the way I'm going to then allow the developer to submit it to the GIS analyst is…

14:46…by setting a property on this Acknowledge Receipt step.

14:51And in this case, we're going to assign this step to the GIS analyst group…

14:57…which means that when this step is reached, it's now moved from the developer to the GIS analyst.

15:03And we'll see this in action in the next demonstration.

15:07So I'll go ahead and accept my changes here, save my workflow…

15:13…it'll do a quick validation to ensure that the workflow I have defined is valid, and I'll turn it back over to Tope now.

15:24Thank you, Kevin.

15:26So, like I said, we'd like to take questions in between.

15:29If you have any questions and you want to keep it till the end of the session as well, that's great.

15:34So I have room for two questions right now. Any comments on what you've seen so far? Alright, great. Thanks, Kevin.

15:45So, we're going to look at how you actually use this workflow.

15:48So you've seen Kevin define a workflow, kind of modeled…we already had an existent workflow.

15:53You've seen how he changed that up to, you know…

15:55…redefine the way the approval process works for the Tahoe yellow cress area.

16:02We're going to look at how you actually use these workflows in a moment.

16:05So it's, again, it's a couple of things that need to happen for you to be able to use our workflow.

16:11First of all, you define the workflow, like you saw us do a second ago.

16:15The next thing you want to do is associate your workflow with a job type. A job type is a template.

16:22It's a template that allows you to define some key properties ahead of time, so that when a job of that type is created…

16:29…not only is it utilizing an instance of the workflow, it also has some preset properties…

16:35…you know, like dates, status, priority, and things like that, once that job gets created the first time.

16:43Once the job type is defined, then you create what we call a job.

16:47And a job could be anything you do within your organization.

16:50An example we have here is creating a map product or, you know…

16:54…collecting points for a specific area, or updating data for a specific job, area of interest.

17:01The examples we'll see today, we'll be executing a job of the type that we just talked about.

17:08So how do you actually access these jobs? Within Workflow Manager…

17:12…the application, there's a couple of ways to access it.

17:15The first thing you want to do is either execute a query.

17:19A query is basically a user-defined criteria that allows you to say, I want to see either all the jobs in my system…

17:26…or I want to see jobs assigned to the GIS analyst group in my system. Or I want to see jobs of high priority.

17:33When you execute these queries that have been predefined by the administrator…

17:37…the resulting jobs get displayed either in the list view or in the map view.

17:43The list view is basically just a tabular view with existing fields that come out of the Workflow Manager system.

17:50It displays the jobs. You can select the job and start interacting with it.

17:54If your jobs have a spatial component to it…

17:57…so if they have like an area of interest where the work is going to take place…

18:01…then you can see this in the map view as well.

18:03So there are times when you have jobs that have no spatial component, well, no spatial context to where they are.

18:11These jobs will only get displayed in the list view, and you'll see that in a moment when Kevin does the next demo.

18:17So once you select a job, there are a couple of things that are associated with the job…

18:21…and I'll kind of go over them in detail as we walk through today. But the heart of it is the workflow.

18:26That's the key thing, right? That's your business process.

18:30The job, on the other hand, also has more information associated with it like the descriptive information.

18:36This could contain information like the job name, so that way you could actually, you know…

18:41…see a job and, you know, it just doesn't have a random number.

18:44It actually has some descriptive information like maybe Create Map Job 1, Create, you know, Update Data Job 1.

18:54It also…you could also have dates associated with your job and status, and I'll talk about that in detail in the next slide.

19:01In addition to that, within Workflow Manager, for a job to be executed, it needs to be assigned to a resource.

19:08There's two kinds of resources in the system. Most…I'll talk about that in detail later…

19:14…but we have groups and then you have users, and I'll talk about how those kind of relate.

19:19You could have a geographic area of interest associated with your job.

19:22It's not a requirement, but if you have a spatial component, it helps you refine the place the job's going to take place.

19:28You could have a geodatabase version, and while everything's happening on your job…

19:33…we're keeping track of what's going on in an activity log.

19:36So, you know who did what, when things happen, and when jobs were created, and things happen on the job.

19:42So for job documentation, there're a couple of ways you can go about this.

19:45You can either utilize the standard properties within Workflow Manager…

19:49…or have extended properties within Workflow…set up within your organization.

19:54For the standard properties, these are very generic things that we believe every job should have.

19:59For example, a name, due dates for a job…you want someone to know when a job is due…

20:07…assignment, and so on and so forth. However, this may not be sufficient for you…

20:11…because you may do things within your organization…

20:13…that require more specific properties that you want to associate with jobs.

20:20You can define those using what we call extended properties.

20:23These are tables that reside in the Workflow Manager system table…system as well.

20:29It resides in the Workflow Manager repository, and you can basically interact with this and associate it with jobs…

20:35…so they can capture more business-specific information on those.

20:40In addition to that, you can capture free text by just typing in notes when things happen on a job.

20:45So for example, you know, something happens while I'm updating data for a specific area…

20:51…and I just want to keep track of that, put a note in there…

20:54…so if someone goes in and didn't know that, you know, an event happened during that process.

20:58I can also add attachments to my jobs. These attachments could be linked to a file system somewhere.

21:05It could also get embedded into the system, into the geodatabase, so you can add any file as an attachment to a job.

21:14I think that's…that's a big deal, huh? So we've talked about resources. So how does it really work?

21:21Within Workflow Manager you have what we call groups.

21:25These groups are kind of synonymous to what you could think of as roles.

21:30Groups could be a category of certain users within your organization.

21:36You have users that belong to a group or multiple groups and these groups are used to…

21:41…actually control certain things within the application.

21:46We have the application privileges that gets assigned to a group.

21:50So the example Kevin showed a second ago was assigning jobs to the GIS analyst.

21:56The GIS analyst within your organization may have…

21:59…you may want to limit what they can do within your workflow system.

22:02So you basically give them application privileges that control what they can or cannot do.

22:09Users belong to this group so they inherit those privileges directly from the groups.

22:18So I've talked about the area of interest. So this is a spatial component of your job.

22:21It allows you to refine where the work needs to happen.

22:26It's a way for you to, you know, control user edits within your organization.

22:31So if you're making spatial edits for two data, and you want to restrict your users…

22:38…from making edits outside of a certain geographic area of interest.

22:41Maybe because you have…you've basically divided agreed…of areas of interest…

22:46…and you don't want me to edit what Kevin has edited.

22:49You can also model rules around utilizing the job's area of interest to prevent this from happening.

22:58Step descriptions are things that actually get…become a part of your steps, and this is also critical.

23:05It's a very, very useful piece of the software, whereby you can provide your own users…

23:09…with some useful documentation on what needs to happen on a step.

23:14Kevin had acknowledged receipt a second ago. That could mean anything to everyone, right?

23:20With a little bit of descriptive information there, a user assigned to do that job can go in there…

23:26…and read what acknowledge receipt entails and be able to actually perform their work.

23:30So this is pretty good because you can also link this to existing documents so you can link it to existing URLs.

23:39For example, you can link it to web help rather than, you know, having to write up your own reason for creating a version.

23:45You can just link it to existing documentation that is already on Esri, on our website…

23:50…and you can, you know, just have that as part of your step descriptions.

23:54The last note there, it's also HTML based, so you can type things out and format them in HTML, will make it nicer and pretty.

24:03Once these jobs are created, your users have tools within Workflow Manager to actually execute these workflows.

24:10I won't go into too much details about this. You're going to see this in a moment in the demo…

24:15…but you have tools that allow you to execute the tools and also tools that allow you to navigate the workflow canvas.

24:24And lastly, we have holds and dependencies. Holds are basically a way for you to put in an arbitrary suspension on a job.

24:31So you may want to make a…pause the job, for example. That's actually a good way to put it.

24:35You may want to prevent people from continuing the work maybe because you haven't received data to continue the work…

24:43…and this is useful for you to go back and actually mine information on this job…

24:47…because, for example, the job might be due in two days, but it's, sorry…

24:51…the job might be due tomorrow, but it's, sorry, sorry, the job might be due today and it's not done yet.

24:58You can go into the Workflow Manager system tables and take a look at the history…

25:02…or take a look at the Holds tab and realize that the job hasn't been completed because we haven't received data.

25:09Lastly, you can model relationships with your job so you can have a job be dependent on another job…

25:16…so that way you can again have a job that maybe requires people to collect data before I make the map.

25:23If the data is not…data collection is not completed, I don't want the guy making the map making the map…

25:29…because we don't want to have up there, you know, data that is not up-to-date.

25:34So these are ways that you can model more intelligent behavior into your workflows.

25:39I will turn it over back to Kevin now to just kind of show us how you create a job and manage some of the job properties.

25:50Thanks, Tope.

25:51So I'm now going to look at this from the point of view of the developer…

25:56…that wants to come in and make a request for the new development.

26:01So I have the Workflow Manager Flex application open here.

26:05This is the sample that Tope mentioned previously that is included with Workflow Manager 10…

26:13…and as well there's a version of it on our Resource Center.

26:18And Tope will talk more about the Resource Center near the end of this session today.

26:23So as a developer I want to come in and make my request for approval…

26:27…so I'm going to click the Create a Job button down here, and I will choose the Request for Approval job type.

26:36I can then set some of those basic properties, such as saying, I'm requesting a due date of next week.

26:44I can change the priority, I can enter a description if I wanted, and I'm just going to go ahead and create my job here.

26:52I can see my list view contains my new job that I created, 2834 here. I can also run a query here.

27:00I'm going to run the Active Request query so that I can see any other active requests for approvals that are out there…

27:08…and I see the area of interest show up on the map for my existing request.

27:14So I want to create my new request next to that old one, so I'm going to zoom in here…

27:20…and I can then define my area of interest right on my map on the web here.

27:25So I'm going to just draw a rough area of interest in here and save the changes to my area of interest.

27:35And now I want to update some more properties of this job before I submit it to the GIS analyst.

27:43So I'm going to go to my Properties tab here.

27:46We can see that currently this job is assigned to the web user…

27:52…which is who I'm logged in as here, and we'll come back to that in a minute.

27:58And you can see I'm unable to update any of those other properties…

28:02…and that's based on the privileges that the administrator has defined for this web user.

28:09If I scroll down here, I can update some extended properties though, so I want to fill in my information…

28:18…requester information, and my requester e-mail here…

28:24…and I'm going to go ahead and save the changes to my job.

28:30And then I'll flip over to the Workflow tab here within the Flex application…

28:34…and I can see my workflow image looking very similar to what we saw on the Administrator…

28:42…and I've now completed my preparation as the developer, so I'm going to mark the Prepare step as completed…

28:51…and once that happens, if I switch back to my properties here…

28:55…we can see this is now assigned to that GIS analyst group…

29:00…as we set up in the last demonstration in the Administrator.

29:04If I once again go back to my workflow here, I'm no longer able to run any steps.

29:10It's now moved away from the developer and is ready for the GIS analyst to pick it up…

29:15…which is where we'll pick it up in the next demonstration. So I'll turn it back over to Tope now.

29:21Thanks, Kevin.

29:24Any comments? Questions? So far? Great.

29:29[Audience question] I just heard about Data Reviewer…

29:32Okay.

29:33[Audience question cont.] Is that part of ArcMap or can you go into Data Reviewer as a step?

29:39So the question, or the comment is, he just heard about Data Reviewer and can…is that part of ArcMap…

29:44…and how can you integrate that with Workflow Manager. Is that kind of what you're asking?

29:50So, there, as part of a step within a workflow, you can associate a Data Reviewer session with a job…

29:58…and there's actually two steps that get shipped with Data Reviewer that gets plugged into Workflow Manager…

30:04…and it allows you to do a batch Data Reviewer job within a job in Workflow Manager.

30:13That's…that's…that's pretty much as far as I know.

30:18Yep.

30:19[Audience question] What's the relationship of Workflow Manager to JTX?

30:23So the question is, What's the relationship of Workflow Manager to JTX?

30:27The answer, it's the same. It is the same in reality. Workflow Manager was a new name introduced at 10 and…

30:35[Audience question] But it's still an extension?

30:37Correct. So yes, it's still an extension. It's an ArcGIS extension.

30:43We have a Desktop extension version and also a Server extension, and they're basically based…

30:50…built on top of our ArcGIS Desktop for the Desktop extension and then Server.

30:55So we require you to have Desktop installed before you can install ArcGIS Workflow Manager Desktop, and the same for Server.

31:02Okay, one more question?

31:04[Inaudible audience question]

31:08Sorry?

31:09[Audience question] The web edition is only at version 10?

31:11Okay, so the question is the web edition only at version 10?

31:15We had a web version at JTX. I believe the first version of the web that we created was at 9.2.

31:24We used to refer to it as JTX web. So the web capabilities already existed prior to 10.

31:31What we did at 10 was actually created a REST API so that you can have more rich Internet applications…

31:36…like Kevin showed a second ago with the Flex Viewer.

31:40So, I'll take more questions after the session. I just wanted to, you know…

31:44…let you guys kind of not forget the questions before we got to the end. We'll pick it up at the end, okay?

31:50Hold your thoughts please. Thank you.

31:53So we're going kind of look into how we integrate this with…integrate the…your business processes and ArcGIS.

32:02Basically, the reason why you want to do this is because you have some sort of…

32:06…spatial component or spatial piece associated with your job.

32:10You may want to manage your geodatabase versions.

32:14These are things that Workflow Manager provides you…provides you with tools to do.

32:18You may also want to automate some processes like map creation or geoprocessing tasks.

32:24We're going to look into more details on how these work.

32:27We're also going to have a demonstration from Kevin on how you actually do this in a moment.

32:33So for version management, version management is mostly required when you have a multiuser editing environment.

32:41It's not a requirement that you have a multiuser editing environment to use Workflow Manager…

32:45…but we do provide you with tools and ways to actually manage that much more effectively.

32:50You define…you define certain things within Workflow Manager, like connection parameters…

32:55…and we automate the creation of versions and we also automate the deletion of versions.

33:00So basically, cleaning up your database when versions are done being used.

33:08This actually happens in a couple of ways, and I'll talk about those right now.

33:12So, first of all you define what we call data workspace within Workflow Manager.

33:17This contains…it's basically an SDE file that contains properties on how your users will connect to your spatial data.

33:26So you can have multiple geodatabases or multiple data stores within your organization.

33:32You can configure that and set it up file at a time in Workflow Manager…

33:36…so that when a user is trying to connect to those spatial data warehouses…

33:41…they're using a set of predefined connection parameters.

33:45When they connect to it off of a job, and Kevin is going to show us a demo on that…

33:50…version creation can happen either as a workflow step or as a click on the job properties…

33:56…so it creates a work…it creates a version and it basically associates that version…

34:01…with that job throughout the life span of the job.

34:07Once these versions are created, we have the concept of what we call open up a map with a step…

34:13…in Workflow Manager, we call it the Launch ArcMap step.

34:16The contents of that map would have…could have predefined layers with already predefined symbology.

34:24The dataset would actually be pointing to the job version if a data workspace, like I mentioned, was configured.

34:32These connections are basically done for you once you execute this step in the back end.

34:38You don't even know that it's happening, but you just see that you're actually working in a…on a particular job version.

34:44This information allows you, or allows your users, to be more productive and more efficient when…

34:50…you know, open up data to edit in ArcMap.

34:52It reduces the chances of errors because Workflow Manager just takes care of that for you.

34:58When you start utilizing these maps, you make changes to symbology, you pan around…

35:02…you zoom around, you add more content to it.

35:05You save it. We save it back into the Workflow Manager repository.

35:09And what this does is, it makes it available to the next guy who's going to be either taking…

35:13…taking the job or reviewing the work.

35:17The example you saw a second ago was Kevin creating a job and assigning it to the GIS analyst.

35:22If there was a QC step and edits were made to the map, changes were done…

35:26…the GIS analyst hands the job over to a QC guy.

35:30The QC guy will see exactly the same map documents that Kevin worked off of, 'cause we store that in the database.

35:37You also have an option to just store it to the file system. Again, that's an option for you if that's more preferred.

35:46While you're in ArcMap, we have a bunch of tools within ArcMap…

35:49…that allows you to interact with the Workflow Manager system.

35:53One of them would be to actually interact with job information and also interacting with the workflow canvas…

35:59…and I'll talk about that in a little bit.

36:01But the step that drives you from within Workflow Manager into ArcMap is a step that we have…

36:09…well, I guess it's a step that comes out of the box with Workflow Manager…

36:13…and all you really need to do is define a map…define a map template and associate it with a job type.

36:20You remember in the beginning I talked about, you know, you define your workflow…

36:24…you associate it with a job type, and you set up a couple of predefined templates…

36:30…or properties that are associated with that job type.

36:33You also…you also set up the map templates…you also set up the map that you want this step to open…

36:40…whenever a user executes that step on a job.

36:47While your users are in ArcMap, at 10 we introduced a concept of having a workflow canvas…

36:53…the entire workflow canvas, which you'll see in a moment, in ArcMap…

36:56…so you can do everything you can do in the Workflow Manager application while you're in ArcMap.

37:01In addition to that, you can actually switch jobs from within ArcMap…

37:05…so this is very useful and it came from requirements from most of our users that…

37:11…most of the time they spent doing work in ArcMap.

37:15They don't see a reason why they need to go into JTX or Workflow Manager…

37:19…to execute a job that drives them back into ArcMap.

37:23So we provided with a list, a query view, in ArcMap, so that you can select the job…

37:29…and that becomes the active job while you're in ArcMap, and you can switch this back and forth.

37:34Once you switch jobs within ArcMap, you can start to interact with the job information window.

37:38You can update properties. You can actually assign work to people. You can change job names.

37:43You can update data…the data source that…the job would be using.

37:49You can add notes and attachments like you would see in a second from now.

37:54You can execute steps or you can also view the job history.

37:57So these are basic things that…productivity tools while you're in ArcMap.

38:04We also went further and integrated more closely with the geodatabase archiving.

38:10For those of you that are doing version edits within your organization…

38:14…GDB archiving allows…allows you to basically bridge…create a bridge or a link…

38:19…between a geodatabase archiving event, or geodatabase archiving edits, to a particular job.

38:27It gives you a better way to track edits that happen to your spatial data on a job.

38:31It tells you who did what, what happened, and you can basically go back and forth between different versions.

38:37So kind of like a QA/QC process that allows you to revert changes…

38:42…and push changes back, and reconcile, and post this as well.

38:47Lastly, we have geoprocessing tools that allow you to be more productive again.

38:50With Workflow Manager you can get job information, take that…

38:55…take the job information and plug it into a much more broader geoprocessing, maybe model.

39:02The classic example we use is maybe the Get Job AOI. You can get the job areas…

39:07…the job's area of interest to maybe create a checkout replica…

39:11…as basically containing data for that particular job's area of interest.

39:15Or you could grab the job's data workspace information and the current job's version information…

39:21…to maybe push data back using geoprocessing tools within your workflows.

39:25I'm going to turn it over back to Kevin now to just show us how all this kind of plot together in ArcMap.

39:32Thanks, Tope.

39:34So I now have the Workflow Manager Desktop application here and I'm going to pick up that job that we created as the developer…

39:43…from now the point of view of the GIS analyst that's going to look at the request that's come in.

39:50So the first thing I'm going to do is run my active requests here, my query…

39:57…and I can see in the list view that I have this job here that's assigned to the GIS analyst group…

40:04…so I know that no individual has kind of taken responsibility for that.

40:08So I'm going to do that now by assigning the job to myself here and saving the changes to my job.

40:19So that means I'm now ready to work on this.

40:22So now that I'm ready to work on it, I'm going to go and have a look at the workflow.

40:28And I have different tools here on my toolbar to allow me to fit the entire workflow to my screen…

40:34…or zoom in to a current step, and I just pan around a little bit here so we can see the current step…

40:40…as well as the next couple coming up here.

40:43So we can see we're on the Acknowledge Receipt step. Before I acknowledge receipt of this request…

40:51…I want to make sure that the developer actually filled out all of the information that I need.

40:56So I'm going to go back to my Properties tab here and I can see that it says that an AOI has been defined.

41:04We could go to the AOI tab and actually see that area of interest, but I just care that one has been defined.

41:12I can also go to my Request for Approval Info tab here, and this is showing me those extended properties…

41:21…that we set on the website as the developer, the name and the e-mail address.

41:27I'm going to also choose, from a drop-down list here that has been set up through configuration…

41:34…my name as the Reviewed By person.

41:38Again, I'll save the changes to my job after that, and now I would maybe go to my e-mail application, whatever that is…

41:45…and send the user an e-mail letting them know I've acknowledged…

41:50…or I've received your request and I'm currently working on it.

41:54Once I've done that, I can go to my workflow and acknowledge that I have completed that by marking that step as complete.

42:02Once that happens, I can run my location analysis step, and this is going to perform that location analysis I described…

42:11…which is an intersection between the area of interest that the developer defined on the website…

42:18…and the Tahoe yellow cress habitat sites.

42:23So we can see that there is an intersection, so it took us to the collect GPS points here.

42:30So at this point we would go out into the field or send a field crew out into the field…

42:34…they would collect GPS points of where they observed the Tahoe yellow cress growing within our area of interest.

42:42And I now have that data as a shapefile on my hard drive.

42:46So I want to, first of all, acknowledge that we have completed that step…

42:52…and I want to load the data from that shapefile or file geodatabase…

42:57…in this case it's a shapefile, into my enterprise geodatabase.

43:01And so I'm going to do that through a geoprocessing model, which I will launch from my workflow here.

43:08And when I run a geoprocessing tool or model from within Workflow Manager…

43:13…it's going to bring up the same dialog that you would see if I had run this from ArcMap or ArcCatalog…

43:21…and I've set it up to prepopulate with my location of my shapefile.

43:26And you can see it's also prepopulated my current job ID here.

43:31And when I run this, it's going to take that shapefile and it's going to load it…

43:35…into the data workspace that I have associated with this job.

43:40Because my model is using that Get Job Data workspace tool that Tope talked about.

43:46So my data has now been loaded so I can close my Geoprocessing dialog…

43:54…and it's moved us along the workflow, and we're ready to now create a version.

43:59So I will run this step and it's going to go and create a new version for me in my geodatabase.

44:08I'll run the Perform Analysis step here, and now this is going to launch ArcMap for us.

44:14And as Tope mentioned, when you run the Launch ArcMap step from Workflow Manager, it opens the application…

44:21…loads the template map document that's been associated with, in this case our Request for Approval, type of job.

44:30It's going to zoom us to the area of interest that the developer specified on the website…

44:36…and it's going to repoint the layers in our map document to the version that we created in that previous step.

44:46So here we could see repointing and now we can see that it jumped as it zoomed us to the area of interest.

44:53Just close this dialog here. And so we're now ready to work in ArcMap.

45:00Well, if I'm a new user, I may not be familiar of what exactly do I need to do for this analysis step…

45:09…so I can go to my Job Information tab here and bring up my step description and I can see here we have the HTML page…

45:19…with some screen shots showing me exactly what I need to do to perform this. So I'm going to start editing here.

45:29I already know what the steps are, so I'm just going to hide that window and go through it here.

45:33So I'll start editing, and if I look down here in the right-hand side of my area of interest, I can see a couple of yellow dots…

45:44…which I know mean they are new occurrences of yellow cress. They did not…had not previously been observed.

45:53So I'm going to just zoom in a little closer here and we can see we have a growth site here…

46:00…in green with a couple of yellow dots inside of it.

46:03So I'm going to select…oops. Before I do that, I'm going to turn off some selectable layers here…

46:11…just leave our growth sites as the selectable layers. So I'll select my growth site.

46:17Here I could see that there's two dots, but if this was a large site, I can go select by location…

46:23…choose my yellow cress discoveries that fall within my selected growth site…

46:29…and I can see I have two…so, two yellow cress discoveries within this.

46:35So I'm going to bring up my Attribute Editor here, select my growth site, enter…there's two occurrences…

46:44…and now I know because we have two new occurrences, we want to protect this area…

46:50…so we're going to change the site type from Open to Reserved.

46:55And you can see my symbology is updated as I do that, so I can save the changes to my edits…

47:03…we can see that this is happening in our job 2834 version here that we created…

47:10…and I'm now ready to make my recommendations based on my analysis.

47:16So I can bring up the same workflow window that we saw in the Workflow Manager application.

47:24So I'm going to mark my Perform Analysis step here as completed, and I'm ready to make my recommendations.

47:31To do that I'm gong to go back to my Job Information window…

47:35…and I'm going to enter some information about my decision into the notes.

47:40So I can say, due to two new occurrences of yellow cress, it is recommended this application be denied.

47:57Save the changes to my notes. And the developer probably wants some more information…

48:03…than just saying, two new occurrences, denied.

48:07So I could go and take a screen shot or create a PDF map from my map document here…

48:14…and I've already saved out an image that would be like that.

48:20So I'm going to go and attach that to my job here. So I can go to my attachments.

48:26We can see there already is an attachment here. And this is something that was automatically added…

48:32…and it's the output of that geoprocessing model that we ran.

48:37So if in the future there are some questions as to what happened…

48:40…we have that documentation along with our job here.

48:45So I'll add a new attachment and I want to store it in the database, so I choose Embedded…

48:51…and I'll choose my screen shot that I have taken, store that with my job, and I'm now complete.

49:04I've now completed my recommendations, so I'll notify the developer of what those recommendations were…

49:12…and I can now mark this request as Completed.

49:17So I'll turn it back over to Tope at this point.

49:23Thank you, Kevin. I almost got carried away there. It's exciting stuff, right?

49:29So, we saw how Kevin's kind of gone through defining your workflow and executed your workflow.

49:36We're going to see how Workflow Manager helps you track your work.

49:40And this is probably a critical part of, you know, what a lot of us do.

49:45Within Workflow Manager there are a couple of ways to do this.

49:49Well, there're a couple of reasons before I go into that. There're a couple of reasons you want to do this.

49:53First of all, you want to enhance communication within your organization…

49:57…and make sure that people know when they have work waiting for them to be done.

50:01You want to provide real-time status to your stakeholders.

50:05This could be done in multiple ways, and I'll talk a little bit about that in a little bit.

50:10You also want to capture events when they happen on your job automatically.

50:14It shouldn't be an extra step, right? You don't want me to, you know, go in there…

50:18…and type that I acknowledge receipt, when I can just check it off and it automatically logs it, and so on and so forth.

50:25The first…the first feature I wanted to introduce to you guys is our notification piece.

50:30You can send e-mails when things happen on a job or when a workflow step is executed.

50:36For example, when a job is assigned to a user, you may set it up so that Workflow Manager…

50:41…actually sends an e-mail alert to that person telling them they have a certain job waiting in the queue for them to execute.

50:47You may also make this a part of the workflow.

50:50Similar to what Kevin showed us a second ago, which is notify development…

50:54…that could be a step that sends a detailed description of what…what happened on a job…

50:59…and share some, you know, additional information for you to keep track of, or to identify the reason…

51:04…for the decision not to approve your development…development request.

51:11What's interesting about this is, it's all fully configurable.

51:15Right now it's available to you as a user on your own local SMTP.

51:19You can extend that and get your…remember in the beginning when I talked about our SDK?

51:23You can extend it and create your own notifiers within your organization if you wanted to.

51:29In addition to job notification, you can also get e-mails sent to you when things happen to spatial…your spatial database, right?

51:37For some of you, it may be critical to know when a certain feature is modified…

51:41…or when a certain feature class is modified or when a certain feature within an area of interest is modified.

51:48These are ways that you can keep track of what's going on within your organization.

51:53Again, these are rules that you define into Workflow Manager Administrator…

51:57…and if these rules are met, an e-mail gets triggered.

52:00Again, it's fully configurable.

52:05I talked about capturing history, when things happen.

52:08Within Workflow Manager we keep track of who's doing what based on their Windows login…

52:13…and when they're logged in to the system, every event or every activity that they do within the system…

52:18…within the Workflow Manager system, is captured in the activity log.

52:22So you can go into the history and take a look at who did what, when they did it, and if it was actually successful or not.

52:31In addition to that, the user can go in there and just type in, you know…

52:35…free text, and that gets stored in our table as well.

52:38One key thing with all of this that I've said is, this information is stored…

52:42…in a centralized location and you can generate reports off of it.

52:47You can mine this using some of the existing built-in reports within Workflow Manager.

52:53These reports are available to you on both the desktop, when you run it from the Desktop application…

52:59…or via server, when you run it from the Server application.

53:03You can also use some of our web charting functionality that Kevin's going to show you in a little bit…

53:08…or maybe you want to use your own in-built, in-house reporting system…

53:13…or something more fancy like Crystal Reports.

53:17I'm going to turn it over back to Kevin now to just kind of give us a demo on how you keep track of your work.

53:26Thanks, Tope.

53:27So I have open now the e-mail the developer might have received automatically when the analyst ran that Notify Developer step.

53:40This is just a sample here because I'm not connected to a mail server…

53:44…so I can't bring up the actual e-mail that would have been sent…

53:47…but we could see it's included the job name and the subject.

53:53We can see it's included the notes here within the text…the subject…or pardon me…

53:59…the body of the message, and that's all configured by the administrator.

54:06So I'll close that, and as the developer, I've received that e-mail and now I want to go find out…

54:11…some more information about why my job is being recommended to be denied.

54:18So I can come back in and I have my job already selected here.

54:22I'm just going to click on it again to refresh my job and I can see the workflow is now completed.

54:29All of the steps have been grayed out here within that.

54:33So I can go to my job history and I can see what steps were done as part of this.

54:40I can go to my notes and see the information that was filled out by the GIS analyst.

54:48And I can go to the Attachments tab here and I can open up that screen shot that was attached by the GIS analyst here.

54:59You can see the sample screen shot that I attached showing my area of interest here with my reserved growth site…

55:00…or a couple of different jobs. But what happens if you're that very first user that we talked about…

55:09…so maybe I need to go back and reevaluate the area of interest that I provided…

55:14…and maybe move the boundary over a bit.

55:18So, close that. Go back to my web application here.

55:22So that's…kind of gives you an idea of how the individual user can look at their individual jobs…

55:35…that Workflow Manager Administrator user who wants to get an overview of all of the jobs in your system?

55:43So I'm going to just switch the user that I'm working as in my Workflow Manager sample application here…

55:53…and I'm going to, first of all, look at a report out of all of the different requests for approval that have come in.

56:01So under my Reports tab here, I could see approval…the approval request summary report…

56:08…and it's showing me that Freddy Smalls has made three requests for approval and they're in different statuses here…

56:18…and Kevin Developer, that user that we were working as, has one request that has been completed.

56:30We can also view this type of information in a pie chart form through this sample application.

56:38So if I go back to my queries here, I'm going to run a different query here…

56:42…which is the Annual Inventory, and this is going to show a different type of job that's set up in our system.

56:50So if I pan over here, I can see I have six areas of interest in a line here for users…

56:57…to go out to do a comprehensive survey looking for the yellow cress.

57:03And I can see my list view here has those. So then if I go to my Charts tab here…

57:09…I can categorize my pie chart based on any of the text fields that I see down here in my query results.

57:19So I'm going to choose Status here, and that gives me my pie chart and I can see…

57:24…that two of my six jobs are in working status, two are closed, and two haven't begun yet.

57:31So maybe as the manager I want to know more about these two that haven't started yet.

57:36I can click on that section of the pie, and you can see it's filtered my results…

57:41…both in the map and in the list to the jobs that meet that status.

57:48I can then drill down into an individual job and maybe begin to evaluate why this job has not begun yet.

57:56And maybe we would come up with some ways to improve our business process…

58:00…basically taking us back to where we started all the demonstrations off by evaluating our business process…

58:07…modeling improvements to it, and you can see how that's kind of a continuous process to improve your workflow.

58:15So I'll turn it back over to Tope now to wrap up.

58:19Thanks, Kevin.

58:21Alright. So we're going to take questions after this.

58:25So overall what you've seen today is just a demonstration that we came up with.

58:31The key thing there is this could be your process, basically modeling your process…

58:36…managing your work, going back in circles.

58:39You know, it's what Kevin just talked about. You could go back and redefine your workflow…

58:44…maybe because there's a better way you can do things, because, you know…

58:47…you could do things more effectively, and so on and so forth.

58:51The key takeaway is this is a demo, but everything we've done today could be…

58:56…you know, simply done with your own business processes.

59:00You can find us at the Geodatabase Island. I don't know if this map is…

59:08…well, you can find us in the Geodatabase Island in the showcase. We're just kind of there, at the bottom there.

59:15We're going to be there today 'til 6:00 and then tomorrow until about 1:30 p.m.

59:21In addition to that, we have some sessions that you may want to attend…

59:25…one for the version management and the road ahead. So we're going to have that tomorrow.

59:30And again, it kind of gives you an idea of what we're working on for 10.1.

59:35It's a good opportunity for you to come in and, you know, tell us things you want us to actually include.

59:41Not only can you do that tomorrow, you can also do that today, or, you know…

59:45…throughout the, throughout the conference while you're here.

59:49Please provide feedback at that URL.

59:53Additional resources. We have a Resource Center like Kevin talked about.

59:58The Resource Center contains some of our sample viewers, some other very, very useful information.

1:00:05We don't have a blog dedicated to Workflow Manager yet…

1:00:09…but we do have posts being put up on the Production Mapping blogs.

1:00:14So occasionally you may see Workflow Manager blogs, Workflow Manager topics probably at that.

1:00:20We do have our user forum, so you can…you guys can, you know, exchange ideas…

1:00:24…or put your questions out there and see if other people have experienced the same things you're experiencing.

1:00:31The Product page is there, if you want to request an eval. That's definitely a good place to start.