A fun use case that has been coming up more regularly lately is the idea of Decisions monitoring some database, file storage, or other application for a change or trigger that would automatically generate a document and then post it to a certain location or email it to a few parties.
What a great use case!!
A few foundational points to start with, first is how a workflow can start.
How to "Kick-off" a Workflow?
- End user submits a form
- Scheduled Job
- API Call
Next we'd want to consider how we could use rules to monitor the change.
Using Rules to "Listen"
A common pattern here is to set up a scheduled job that kicks off a workflow that checks the system in question and pushes data through an action rule that would evaluate and subsequently kick off the document generation workflow.
Flow Steps for Document Generation and Management
Decisions has out of the box flow steps you can use to manipulate Word, Excel, and PDF documents. Many of our customers use templates and Decisions Forms to collect the information from an end user that would either be directly merged into the document - or to collect information that would trigger business rules to include certain terms or attachments in a document.
These documents could then be routed for approval or signature using something other Flows or integrating with and app like DocuSign with versions and a history of all the details stored for reporting in Decisions.
