1.2 Automating Business and IT Processes with Workflows

In an organization, users often require access to various resources to accomplish tasks based on their roles. Identity Manager provides workflow capabilities to ensure that your provisioning processes involve the appropriate resource approvers.

Identity Manager also provides workflow capabilities to ensure that your provisioning processes involve the appropriate resource approvers. For example, assume that John, who has already been provisioned with an Active Directory account, needs access to some financial reports through Active Directory. This requires approval from both John’s immediate manager and the CFO. Fortunately, you have set up an approval workflow that routes John’s request to his manager and, after approval from his manager, to the CFO. Approval by the CFO triggers automatic provisioning of the Active Directory rights needed by John to access and view the financial documents.

Workflows are highly flexible and capable of supporting varying business requirements through template definition, escalation, parallel approvals, serial approvals and multi-step approvals. Workflows can be initiated automatically when a certain event occurs (for example, a new user is added to your HR system) or initiated manually through a user request.