27 articles about Processes, in reading order.
Parsware Platform
When a Parsware business process needs a person, it sends them a task. My tasks lists yours; opening one takes it and shows what it is about, and Decide finishes it with an outcome such as Approve or Reject, after which the process moves on by itself.
Parsware Platform
Every Parsware script is BS Lang, but a form rule, a plugin step, a Custom API and a step in a process can't call the same functions. What each one gets depends on where it runs and what it has in front of it, a form, a record being saved, a caller or a running process. Here is each list, why it differs, and what happens when you call a function from the wrong one.
Parsware Platform
Parsware has several places to put a rule. Form rules make a form respond as you type. Plugin steps decide what may be saved, however it's saved. Custom APIs answer other systems, scheduled jobs run on a clock, and processes carry work between people. This guide says which one to reach for, with a real example of each.
Parsware Platform
A business process in Parsware is drawn, not coded. Lanes for who does the work, shapes for the steps, arrows for the order. We opened the leave-approval sample and went round the designer: the palette, the outline, the canvas, the properties panel, and the problems panel that checks the process as you draw.
Parsware Platform
A swimlane named Manager tells a reader who does the work. It tells the engine nothing until you give the lane a Role, picked from the environment's security roles. We set one on the leave-approval sample, added a lane, and followed a role from the designer to the people who hold it.
Parsware Platform
Four shapes carry most processes: a start, tasks, a branch where the process decides, and a finish. We opened the two-step approval sample and clicked each one to see what it asks for and where it can connect, and found the designer letting a connection leave a Finish without a word. It says so now.
Parsware Platform
A task's Type puts a small badge on the step: user, service, script, manual, send, receive, business rule. Only one of them changes what a run does. We went through the list on the two-step approval sample, and say plainly what each type does and what it only describes.
Parsware Platform
A purchase order needs Finance and Legal to sign off, and neither should wait for the other. A Fork sends it to both at once, and a Join waits until they have both answered. We opened the parallel sign-off sample, and fixed three things on the way: unreadable labels, stray resize handles, and a Join whose most useful setting had no control.
Parsware Platform
You drag from one step to another to connect them, the designer draws the corners, and View → Auto arrange tidies the whole diagram without moving work between lanes. Trying it for this article found four things to fix: two kinds of overlapping lines, a drag that drew nothing, and a hint that was always in English.
Parsware Platform
A branch doesn't decide anything by itself. Each connection leaving it carries a condition, one line of BS that is true or false, and the run takes the one that's true. We read the conditions on the Leave Approval sample, tried to break them three ways, and fixed two things on the way.
Parsware Platform
Every step in a process can run code at the moments that matter to it: when the run arrives, when the task is given to someone, when they finish it, when the run leaves. A user task also works out who gets it and which record they look at. We opened the manager's step in the Leave Approval sample and went through all six.
Parsware Platform
A user task has to land in somebody's list. It goes to whoever its Assigned to answers, or failing that whoever holds its lane's role in the run's unit, and a step can refuse the person who started the run. We went through each on the Leave Approval sample, and found the help page telling people to write something that doesn't work.
Parsware Platform
A process carries values from one step to the next: what the manager decided, how many days were asked for. Each is a variable, declared once on the process with a name and a type, given a first value in On start, and read and written by name. We added one to the Leave Approval sample and misspelt another on purpose.
Parsware Platform
The process designer checks the drawing as you draw it, and the corner of the canvas says what is still missing: a step nothing reaches, a step that leads nowhere, a timer that never fires, a misspelt variable. Selecting a line takes you to the thing it is about. Nothing stops you saving, but Publish now waits for the list to be empty.
Parsware Platform
When a process step reaches a person, they read what it opens and then decide. A coform is what they decide on: a few fields and the buttons that end the step. We built one in the parallel sign-off sample, put it on a task, and routed each button its own way. The field types now read as words.
Parsware Platform
A process design is a plain JSON file you can export, edit and import, and the import checks it before anything reaches the canvas. Export a picture, PNG or SVG, for a document or a slide. Trying both, we fixed two things: the pictures now carry the lane names, and a refused file names the missing node.
Parsware Platform
A drawn process that nobody's software follows is a poster. In Parsware the drawing is what runs: you draw who does what on swimlanes, publish a version, and the engine starts it from a record, sends each step to the right person's task list, and keeps a history of every run. This is how the three parts fit together.
Parsware Platform
Save keeps your work; Publish changes what runs. Each publish is a numbered version, a run keeps the version it started on, and the line under the title says whether what you see is live. Writing this we found Publish stopping after it saved unsaved edits, and fixed it.
Parsware Platform
A change request goes to one person, who may correct it, then to a second, who reads a report of it and approves or rejects. We ran it as two different people, and the run's history says who decided each step. Writing this we found four things that only an administrator never notices, and fixed them.
Parsware Platform
An employee asks for a week off, their manager decides, and a branch sends the request one way or the other. We ran it as both people and read the run afterwards. The sample shipped with roles that only opened the app and a manager's step that said read-only; both are fixed.
Parsware Platform
A purchase order goes to Finance and Legal at the same moment, two people decide on their own, and the process waits for both before it gives one answer. We ran it with Finance signing off and Legal refusing, and watched the run wait at the join in between.
Parsware Platform
A step can be due within a set time, and when it isn't done, the process can offer it to somebody else as well or decide it by itself. A timer makes the process wait. We ran a support ticket through all three, and fixed five things on the way, starting with the designer turning every timer into a plain task.
Parsware Platform
A process can start by itself when a record is created, changed or deleted, or from a button on the record's form and list. Either way the run knows which record it's about. Running the sample as two people found a status that never changed and people named by their email address; both are fixed.
Parsware Platform
Small requests go to a department head, bigger ones to the finance director, the biggest to a committee as well. The bands live in a table finance edits, not in the process, so moving one changes who decides the next request. The sample said it worked this way and didn't; now it does.
Parsware Platform
Every run of a process has a page: the route it has taken so far, where it is now, who it's waiting on, and everything that has happened, in order. From there you can pause it, stop it, or hand a waiting task to somebody else. We followed one change request from start to finish.
Parsware Platform
A run's page says where one request has got to. A process's Insights screen says what keeps happening: how many runs got through, how long work waits before anybody picks it up, where runs stall, and how decisions usually go. Trying it, we fixed two things: decisions are named by their button, and the people view names people.
Parsware Platform
A process moves between environments the way everything else does: in its solution, with its table, its form, its app and its roles. Import publishes it, and uninstall takes it out again. Trying that with a run still waiting, we fixed what happens to the run: it's now stopped, and its history says why.
