Overview
The Eleos Platform allows you to create multiple workflows and apply these workflows on a per-load basis. Workflow allows users to interact with a load or individual stops and proceed through certain steps. You can set up a single workflow or create multiple workflows to suit your business needs.
How It Works
To get started, navigate to the Workflows section of App Manager > App Configuration. Each workflow consists of a set of load and stop statuses and the actions that users can perform in each status.
The workflow editor has two functions:
To associate actions with a load or stop status
To enable offline workflow functionality, which allows users to complete actions when connectivity is lost
Unless overridden by web services, the Platform automatically shows the actions associated with a particular status on the relevant load or stop.
Online Workflow
Backend business logic completely drives online workflow. Workflow in the mobile app functions via messages. When the system flags a message as a workflow message, the mobile app handles it with specific synchronization logic.
Immediate Delivery: When a user triggers an action, the mobile app instantly attempts to send that data to your message web service.
UI Safeguards: To prevent accidental duplicate actions, the mobile app hides all other action buttons and displays a loading spinner until the process completes.
The Sync Window: The mobile app waits for your web service to acknowledge the message. Your systems must update the load or stop between the request and response.
Refresh and Update: Once your messaging service returns a 200 OK status, the mobile app automatically pulls the latest load information, clears the spinner, and presents the user with updated stops and next available actions.
WARNING: It is crucial that the server finish applying all status changes to the load or stop before returning a successful status code. If the service responds with a 200 before updating the load fully, the mobile app will refresh only pulling your current load data. This results in the user seeing stale data or partially updated information.
Offline Support
The workflow editor completely drives offline workflow. In cases where the device is offline or web services are unavailable, a workflow proceeds according to preset rules. These rules apply device-local changes to the load or stop so the user can continue their workday. Later, the mobile app delivers the underlying actions to the server in the order they were completed.
For each action in a workflow, you can configure the following changes to take effect when a user performs that action offline:
Change the status of the load
Change the status of the stop
Advance to the next stop
Complex Cases
Often, customer or business requirements dictate that the workflow for a stop vary beyond regular steps.
For example, if you need a user to confirm they have personal protective equipment before performing a normal stop workflow, you can create an alternate status called STOP-PPE. This status asks the user to confirm they have their equipment as part of their arrival before advancing the stop to the ARRIVED status. Stops that do not have a requirement begin in a READY state that transitions immediately to ARRIVED.
In some cases, the business logic determining whether a particular action needs to show is too complex to model using a specific load or stop status. In these cases, you can explicitly define the available actions for a load or stop using the actions property.
NOTE: Inline actions do not have offline effects. Where possible, consider using the predefined action type to refer to an action defined in App Manager rather than defining the entire action in the loads response. Predefined actions allow you to re-order or vary what actions show using more complex rules while still getting the benefits of offline workflow.