I have some rough suggestions for making the Workflow Developer's Guide better. It is arguably the worst document in the product documentation suite.
o First, based on the underwhelming amount of use Workflow Builder appears to get (basing this on the number of people in the Workflow Focus Group at GearUp who raised their hand when asked if they are interested in Interwoven spending a lot of time working on Workflow Builder - there was 1 person) either put the Workflow Builder documentation in an Appendix or put it in its own document.
o Beef up the Job Spec Files section with more detail, more thoroughly explained examples, more definitions. For example, the IsValid method in WFtask.pm states that it "Returns true if this is a valid task" - what the **** does "being a valid task" mean? The list of methods in the supplied WFtask.pm and WFworkflow.pm modules is not even current. There's no excuse for that. I don't think anyone spent any time on this section for 5.5.2.
o Beef up the Workflow Template Files section with more definitions, detail, and examples that are thoroughly explained.
o Add the Tech Doc for Template Based Email somewhere.
o Add the info in Adam's WF Supplemental Tutorial somewhere. This is some really great info, some of which is completely undocumented in the Developer's Guide.
o Add the kind of info you get in the Advanced Workflow Class to the document. Advanced users need to know all the info, not just the high level stuff. We shouldn't have to pay for a course to get low-level detailed documentation.
o Add documentation for all the other supplied modules. There have been many threads in DevNet about using the methods in some of these modules to invoke WFT files without using the GUI. Detailed documentation on how to do this would be great.
This is just a wish list. Anything else that's out there sitting on some engineer's desk that could be useful should be added as well. It's clear that this document has failed to evolve with the product. It's almost worth dumping the whole thing and starting from scratch. Workflow can be a complex beast, but also can be incredibly useful when used to its fullest extent. The documentation needs to be better than it is. Let's see some other suggestions.
Dave SmithSr. Software Engineer
Nike, Inc.
(503) 671-4238
DavidH.Smith@nike.com
Edited by Smitty77 on 11/06/02 12:15 PM (server time).
