Setting Up Users

Users and roles are obviously a very important part of workflow.

 By default, WorkflowFirst makes things easy for you and logs you in as "admin" - it will do this if there are no users defined in the Users tab. The "admin" user (also called the system admin) has complete control over the system - they can view and enter in any workflow stage.

Once you're happy with your processes, you can go ahead and start adding new users, and assigning roles to them. We'll go through that now.

Before you create users, you need to add a Configuration record. To do that, go to the Configuration tab, and click the link it gives you to create it with default values:

You can usually just click "OK" here - but if you like you can set the "Requires Login" to "Yes" - that way it will always ask for a login name, instead of logging you in as admin by default. Also, if you're using the private install, then you'll have to enter in the SMTP Email server here, along with the login and From email address.

Next you can click on the Users tab and start adding some users:

There are two ways to add a user - either add a regular user, or an approver user. It's important to understand the difference: regular users can start workflow, but only approvers can process the workflow - this is because approver users are called "Power Users".

It's worth noting that if you're using the private installed version, then Power Users require a license, whereas regular users do not. If you don't have sufficient user licenses, it will give you a link to a window where you can purchase more.

In our example we'll just add all users as approvers. So click "New Approver":

Enter in the fields, and then click "+ Roles". This is where you assign one or more roles to a user.

To learn about roles, please see our Security overview section.

Note: If you want a role to always be added to all users, then you can go to the Roles list under the Application Record in WorkflowFirst designer, and select "Apply by Default" to Yes, and republish.

In this case we're adding the role "Employee".

You'll notice there's an option "Receive Role-Based Emails". If this is set to yes, then whenever a record hits a workflow stage for a particular role, that person will be emailed to tell them the workflow record needs to be processed. Sometimes you don't want to be notified - instead you can have a "catch all" email for your group that receives them. The choice is yours.

Another role you should consider adding is the "Assigned XXX" role - which limits that user to only see the workflow entries on that tab that they themselves have entered, or that are assigned to them. This could be very important if the details of what they enter in might be confidential. Note, though, you will want to add this to all users who are involved in that workflow, not just the requestors.

Then you click "OK" to add the user. You should try to add at least one user for each role that you've used in your workflow - such as a manager for example.

Once the user is added, an email will be sent to them with their temporary password. They will then login and set their password.

After you've added the users, you can click the "Sign out" link at the top right corner and try logging in as one of them:



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Up Since 2/29/2024 12:02:23 AM