4.0 Working with Processes and Workflows

A process consists of the steps taken to respond to an event sent to Workflow Automation by a data source. To establish your IT policy governance model, you must define the IT processes you use when you respond to specific events throughout your environment. Workflow Automation evaluates incoming events against the processes your team defines to represent your IT policies.

Each process has an associated workflow. A workflow is a graphical representation of the steps in a process, made up of activities and connectors, designed to reflect a specific IT policy, as shown in the following figure. When one or more events from a data source match the trigger criteria of a process, Workflow Automation executes the process and initiates a work item.

Use the Workflow Designer to refine the process workflow until it matches your IT policy for addressing, responding to, and closing an incident. During execution, a workflow visits activities and traverses connectors in a specific order (called a flow). The Start of Workflow activity is the first activity the workflow executes. If the workflow contains multiple Start of Workflow activities, the workflow can have multiple simultaneous flows, as shown in the following figure.

The workflow can also create multiple flows when it traverses more than one connector from an activity or when the trigger appends a new event to the work item. When there are no more active flows, execution terminates.