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This chapter covers the following topics:
  • Workflow overview
  • Quickstart
  • Steps
  • Workflow settings
  • Workflow analytics
  • Delegation center
  • Workflow task center
  • FAQs
  • Workflow examples
  • The YiDA simple workflow designer supports up to 100 design nodes (including the start and end nodes). Exceeding this limit triggers an error and prevents you from saving the workflow.
  • The YiDA Dedicated edition workflow designer supports up to 150 nodes, giving you more flexibility to orchestrate business processes.

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Feature Overview

If a form requires review and confirmation by users, use a workflow form. The key difference between a workflow form and a regular form is that a workflow form requires workflow design.

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Use Cases

Traditional paper-based approvals are slow and inefficient. In complex business processes, initiators must run back and forth to collect approvals, and approvers are frequently interrupted from their work. YiDA solves this by enabling online workflow approvals, so you can efficiently handle approvals across complex business processes and boost team productivity.

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Procedure

  1. Sign in to the YiDA workbench.
  2. Select the target app and open the Page Management page.
  3. Select the workflow form you want to edit and click it to open the Form Design page.
  4. On the Form Design page, click Workflow Design at the top.
  5. Click Create Workflow in the upper-right corner.
Enabled workflows are view-only and cannot be edited directly. When a workflow form is created, a default workflow is generated automatically with you as the approver and V0 as the version number.

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FAQs

Q: How do I create a new simple workflow designer? Why is the regular workflow editor in my app not upgraded to the new simple workflow designer? The new simple workflow designer currently applies only to workflow pages created after the update. Workflows created before the update still use the legacy workflow designer. Q: Does YiDA 2.0 support the new simple workflow designer? Yes. On the page, click the location highlighted in the blue box to upgrade with one click. After the upgrade, you cannot roll back to the legacy workflow designer. Any workflow settings you have configured will be migrated to the new version. Q: When I submit an approval, I get the error “The approver is invalid. Contact your Organization Admin.” What should I do? Cause: The approver configured on the step does not exist. YiDA validates the approver against the workflow design when a simple workflow is initiated. Solutions:
  • This error usually occurs when the approver is set to a manager. Verify whether the initiator’s department in DingTalk Contacts has a corresponding manager configured. If not, add one.
  • Alternatively, on the step, set the approver to “Allow approver to be empty.” For example, if a second-level manager may not exist, allow the second-level manager to be empty. See the animation below for configuration steps:
Q: How do I notify the initiator of the approval result? Only the mobile client supports this. When approving on mobile, the approver can select “Notify initiator” at the bottom after tapping Accept or Decline. The PC client does not support this feature. After you select the option and submit, a message notification appears in the initiator’s DingTalk private chat, as shown below: Q: How do I turn off approver notifications when submitting approvals on mobile? When you submit a workflow form on mobile, a dialog appears by default: “The current handler is: XX. Notify them via chat?” (The PC client does not show this prompt.) To turn off this feature, click here to fill out the form and submit a request. YiDA will process the request within three business days. Tip: This feature is turned off at the organization level. Consider carefully before proceeding. Q: How do I quickly convert a workflow form into a regular form? You cannot convert form types directly. Use the following workaround: Open the workflow form design page >> Hold Ctrl (Windows) or Command (Mac) >> Select all components on the form design page, or click the outline tree on the left to select all components >> Copy with the keyboard shortcut >> Paste into a newly created regular form >> Save Note: This method only copies the form configuration into the regular form. Any JS code or page settings must be reconfigured in the new regular form. Q: After a workflow is initiated, why is an approver missing from the approval flow? Possible cause: After the workflow was initiated, the initiator’s department structure was adjusted, so the new department workflow did not take effect. Q: Why did I not receive a work notification after the approval task was generated? A: A short network latency exists between when an approval task is generated and when the work notification is sent. Before sending the work notification, the system checks the task status. If the task is already complete, the approval notification is not sent. For example, if an approval task is generated and the approver completes the approval immediately, the work notification may not have been sent yet. In this case, the corresponding work notification will not be sent. Q: How do I customize the data range for workflow analytics?
  • If you create a default report via Workflow Form > Create Workflow Analytics, the default report applies the filter conditions of the current form and queries only the current workflow by default.
  • If you manually add a component to the report and select the built-in dataset, you must bind the workflow yourself in Filter conditions. Otherwise, the default is the full detail data at the app level.
Q: I configured message notifications, but they don’t work. Why? If you add, modify, or delete a message template in a workflow form, click the blue text [Click here] on the page. This automatically creates a new workflow version so the changes take effect. Q: What are the YiDA instance detail link formats?
  • Workflow instance detail link format
  • Form instance detail link format
Q: After a workflow is initiated, what happens if the initiator leaves the organization or changes departments? How do I handle errors that occur during execution?
  • The initiator and the initiating department are locked in at the moment the workflow is initiated and do not change throughout the workflow’s lifecycle, regardless of department changes or delegated resubmissions.
  • If a user in the workflow leaves the organization and an approval step depends on that user’s organization structure information (for example, manager approval), the workflow cannot find an approver. This causes an error and blocks the workflow from proceeding. In this case, the admin must resolve the issue by jumping to another step.