Support & Tech Talk

FlowBiz Global Support for Customers and Partners

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Customer Support Levels

FlowBiz software support is a cost-effective and efficient way to access responsive, technical support from anywhere in the world. And, it provides prompt responses to your questions.

Technical Support includes the following features:

• Access to a variety of FlowBiz technical resources.
• Designated IT technical staff for contacting FlowBiz
• Access to the FlowBiz Software Support Portal.
• Technical support on line.
• Technical papers and manuals on line.

	Service Advantage	Service Express
Escalated Support to Service Level Agreements
Access to on-line help and knowledge bank
Updates as they become available
Direct technical telephone support

Tech Talk

Queuing  - Version 3.5 onwards

Queuing is a powerful add on to the FlowBiz suite.  Queuing is integrated with the workflow Automation.  With Queuing Workflow Automation and Script type processes can utilise Workflow Components to add themselves (or the process Item) into a specified queue, get next from queue, pick from queue, delete from queue and reinstate to queue.  This means that work balancing and allocation is now an integral part of the way a business can operate.  Utilising conditions and rules most queuing scenarios can be handled.

Queue ordering models are:

·         FIFO (First In First Out)

·         LIFO (last in First Out)

·         Priority (numerical priority assigned per item in the queue).  Items with the same priority will be extracted in FIFO order

·         Rule Based.  The rule will return zero or one item to extract.  If no items are returned then there is a fallback option that can be any of FIFO, LIFO or Priority.

Each queue has its sort order defined as a property of the queue and if no order is specified there is a database wide default setting and if this is not set then the base default is FIFO.

The priority of each item is defined when the item is added to the queue and can be derived from a rule associated with the queue.

Each queue can also have an Object Type specified so that only objects of that particular type can be placed into the rule.

An Item can only be active in each queue once.  After the item is extracted (or deleted) from the queue it can be added again.

When an item is added to a queue an optional rule can run to determine if the item can be added – this could be used for extra validation to ensure only items in a particular state can be added.

Each queue can be defined with a maximum size and/or an alert size that is checked each time an item is added.  If there is an alert level set and an alert email defined then the system will send an email each time an item is added to a queue that is filled past the alert level.

Items can be removed from a queue in 3 ways.

·         Get Next From Queue – this will be the standard method to get the next available item from the queue based on the queue ordering model.

·         Get Item From Queue – this will allow a specific item to be extracted out of sequence.

·         Delete Item From Queue – this will allow items that are no longer required in the queue (or items added in error) to be removed from the queue.

If an item has been taken from a queue (in any of the 3 possible ways) it can be reinstated in the queue in the same position it was in before it was removed.  (Subject to the same item not being added in in the meantime).

The method to get the next item in the queue can be used without actually taking the item from the queue so that it will be possible to preview what will be the next item without actioning the removal.

To be able to extract an item from a queue the user must have Publish permissions on the queue and when an item is extracted from a queue, if it is a job or process queue then the job or process will be allocated to the user extracting it.

There are a number of other support properties associated with a queue:

·         Items In Queue – returns the number of active items in the queue

·         Is Item In Queue – checks to see if a specified item is currently active in the queue

·         Position In Queue – returns the current position of the item in the queue.  This functionality is limited to queues that are not ordered by Rules (i.e. FIFO, LIFO and Priority only)

·         Longest Time In Queue – returns the greatest length of time of the active items in the queue

·         Queue List – returns a collection of items in the queue.  Each item in the queue is defined with the following fields:  Item ID, Date In Date Out, Priority, Scheduled Date, Notify ID

·         Average Time In Queue – returns the average length of time each extracted item was in the queue for *

·         Items In Queue Longer Than – returns a count of items in the queue for longer than the specified period *

·         Average Time In Queue Period – returns the average length of time each item was in the queue for items with a Date In that falls within the specified range *

·         Expected Time In Queue – calculates the expected time in the queue for an item based on its position in the queue and the average time in the queue *

* These properties are to be implemented in a future release.