Basics

Connect Workflow is a tool to automate the processing, distribution and printing of your business documents. Once installed on the server, it can be set up to automate all tasks related to document processing (see Setting up the working environment).

When you're all set up, you can start using the Workflow Configuration tool, assuming that you have already done research on the processes that need to be automated.
Working with Workflow implies the following basic steps:

  1. Creating a Workflow configuration
    A Connect Workflow configuration consists of a number of processes, of which each has an input task, output task and possibly a number of tasks in between. See: About Workflow Configurations.
  2. Debugging the configuration
    Debugging is the act of running through your process, either step by step or as a whole, directly from the Connect Workflow Configuration Tool, in order to detect and resolve issues with your process. Debugging a process requires providing a sample data file. See: Debugging and error handling.
  3. Sending it to the Server (and testing it again)
    As you are working on your configuration, you can save that configuration file as a file on your local hard drive. Saving a configuration file never replaces the current Connect Workflow service configuration. To do this, you must use the Send Configuration command; see Sending a configuration.

Related tools and resource files

Workflow serves as automation tool in a number of distinct products. Some of the tasks that can be used in a Workflow configuration only work with product-specific files. The tools that you need in order to produce those files depend on the product that you are using:

The product-specific files need to be sent to, or imported into, Workflow before they can be used in conjunction with a task (see Workflow Configuration resource files). They become visible in the Configuration Components pane.