Use Cases: Conditional Routing

The following use cases illustrate ways in which conditional routing can be used.

Expense Reporting

Employees use an application to submit expense reports. A decision named Amount? has an incoming Evaluate transition and three outgoing transitions: Send to A/P, Get Mgr Approval, and Get VP Approval. The workflow evaluates the rules that are associated with the Amount? decision.
  • If the reimbursement amount is less than or equal to $100.00, no approval is required, so the Send to A/P transition is executed.
  • If the reimbursement amount is more than $100.00 but less than or equal to $1000.00, a manager's approval is required, so the Get Mgr Approval transition is executed.
  • If neither of the preceding rules evaluate to "true," then the reimbursement amount is more than $1000.00. In this case, a vice president's approval is required, so the Get VP Approval transition is executed.

New Hire Processing

Human resources uses a new hire application to request new computers. A decision named Employee Type? has an incoming Evaluate transition and two outgoing transitions: Send to Facilities and Send to IT. The workflow evaluates the rules that are associated with the Employee Type? decision.
  • If the employment type is "Local," office space is needed for the employee, so the Send to Facilities transition is executed. After the office space is allocated, the Send to IT transition is executed so a computer can be ordered for the employee.
  • If the employee type is not "Local," the employee must be "Remote." In this case a computer is needed, but not office space, so the Send to IT transition is executed.

Issue Escalation

IT uses an incident management application to handle trouble tickets and escalate them to a manager if they have been open for more than 14 days. A decision named Age? has two outgoing transitions: Escalate and Otherwise. The workflow evaluates the rules that are associated with the Age? decision. If the Submit Date in the rule is Now - 14 days, the Escalate transition is executed. If not, the Otherwise transition is executed and the workflow continues in its normal path.

Note: If the value of the Submit Date field is converted into an application variable, an administrator can override it in SBM Application Administrator. For example, if a policy change lowers the escalation time to 7 days, the change can be made without changing the rule in SBM Composer. For more information, see the SBM Application Administrator Guide or online help.

Related Topics

Rule Overview

About Decisions

Conditional Routing Overview