Processing Work Items

A work item represents a task in a process. Typically, a work item has an electronic form associated with it that must be opened and filled out (some forms may only display information and will not have fields to fill out).

You can then save the work item in your work item list so that it can be opened again and completed at a later time. When the form is completed, the work item is submitted so that the process instance can progress, possibly resulting in another work item that represents the next task in the process.

Note that you can also select one or more work items in your work item list, and tell the system to mark them as complete and submit them. This is called the skip function. For more information, see Skipping Work Items.

Note: Pageflow definitions can include branching that would require the simultaneous handling of multiple user tasks, each requiring the display of a form (this same scenario could also occur in embedded sub-processes set up for chained execution).

Workspace cannot currently display multiple forms resulting from these parallel pageflows. If one is encountered in Workspace, a warning message is displayed. In some situations, none of the forms can be displayed and execution of the pageflow (or chaining in the sub-process) cannot proceed. If a parallel pageflow is encountered inside of a business service, it may be able to arbitrarily display one of the forms, but an exception may occur later when the form is submitted.