Workflow Manager System Settings

This topic applies to ArcGIS for Desktop Standard and ArcGIS for Desktop Advanced only.

ArcGIS Workflow Manager for Desktop provides many ways to customize the functionality and look of the client application. To view the System Settings for Workflow Manager, from the Administrator's Settings menu, choose Workflow Manager System Settings. The tabs and the behavior they control are discussed below in detail.

General settings

General application settings enforce how the application will behave in specific situations related to job assignment and status, area of interest, version management, and transaction management. For more information on the status assignment options, see Status Types.

Job settings

Auto assign job based on step assignment	During workflow execution, if a step that is reached is assigned to a user that is not the current user, the job will be reassigned to match the step assignment. If the step is assigned to a group that the current user is not a member of, the job will be reassigned to match the step assignment.
Use automatic status assignment	The job's status will be managed by Workflow Manager based on the stage of the job. Created—Job is created but the workflow is not committed (still available for editing). Ready to Work—Job is created and the workflow is ready for execution. Working—Steps in the workflow are being executed. Done Working—All the steps in the workflow have been executed. Closed—The job is not available for workflow execution or property updates.
Show Pending Days	This option enables the display of pending days in the property tab of the job under dates. The number of days the job has been pending is calculated from the date the job is started. If the job is closed, then the end date and the start date are taken into account to calculate the number of days the job was pending before it was closed. When the option to take holds into account for the pending days is selected, the number of days for each hold is taken out of the pending days calculation. For example, if the job was started on November 1 and two holds of 10 days each were present for the duration of the job, and the job was closed on November 26, the number of days the job was pending before being closed would be 6.
Use step status assignment	With this option, if a status type is associated with a step in a job's workflow, the job's status will update to match the status when the step is reached.
Start JOB IDs at Value	Workflow Manager will add this value to the automatically assigned Job ID of created jobs.

Job settings in detail

User authentication

When enabled, this feature allows Workflow Manager to authenticate users against a domain.

Administration

When enabled, this setting will ask the user to enter a password for the owner of the versions attempting to be deleted.

As part of the Custom Steps in ArcGIS Workflow Manager, we provide a clean up step that can be used to delete versions as part of the workflow. When executed, you will be prompted to provide a valid username and password before deleting the version. If you have versions owned by individual database users, you can specify a Super-User here (like SDE user) to delete versions.

Application tabs

The tabs available in the client application can be controlled as a system setting. For example, you can remove the AOI tab because you have the Define AOI step in your workflow.

You can refine the tab visibility by allowing certain users in a group to access certain tabs and restrict other groups from accessing the tabs in the application. This association is done based on group membership. For example, if you only want Managers to see the Job History tab, you can disable this tab for other members of your organization and only grant the Managers access to the tab.

Restrict tab visibility based on groups

Notifications

If you are choosing to use the built-in notification engine for Workflow Manager, you will need to configure the name of your SMTP server on this tab. This will be used by all the Workflow Manager client machines to send outgoing notification e-mail messages. To use the built-in notification engine, you only need to specify the SMTP server name and optionally provide default sender e-mail and name.

To use a secure SMTP server, you are required to specify SMTP Server, Port, and valid user name and password that can be used to send the messages through the server. For example, if using Google's SMTP server, you will need to provide a valid gmail e-mail account that will open communications between the ArcGIS Workflow Manager application and the SMTP server.

Note:

The secure SMTP server relies on some .NET libraries that are not included with an ArcGIS Workflow Manager for Server only installation. We recommend using the built-in option if deploying Server only installation of ArcGIS Workflow Manager to send notifications.

SMTP Server	The name of your SMTP server for sending outgoing messages.
Port	The port of the SMTP server used; by default, the port number used is 25. This setting is optional, but if your SMTP server is using a different port number, enter it here. This is also required when using secured SMTP authentication.
Plain Text Notifications	The text in the notification type message will not contain special formatting.
HTML Notifications	HTML tags contained within the message of the notification type will be resolved when sending the message.
Default Sender Email	If the notification type does not have a designated sender, the e-mail entered here will be used.
Default Sender Display Name	If the notification type does not have a designated sender display name, the e-mail entered here will be used.
SMTP Authentication—Username	Must specify a valid e-mail account when using secured SMTP server. For example, [e-mail], if using Google's SMTP server.
SMTP Authentication—Password	Must specify a valid password for the user name specified above when using the secured SMTP server.
SMTP Authentication—Protocol	Must specify a the protocol used by the SMTP server. For example, SSL or TLS.

Notification settings details

Spatial notification settings allows you to send notifications when users post using the Workflow Manager. Only users that have layers registered for notification at 9.3 or 9.3.1 need to use this setting. This does not apply to users who are using geodatabase archiving for spatial notification. For more information on spatial notification, see Spatial Notification.

Map views

Job Result Map View

You can select an existing map from the Workflow Manager repository that you want to have shown in the Map View tab.

You can configure a map document with the AOI symbology you want to have and display that to your users in the query results map view.

AOI Map View

Zoom to Job AOI	This will automatically zoom to the AOI of the job when the AOI tab is activated.
AOI Selection Color	The current job's AOI will be highlighted in the AOI tab using the color selected here.
Restore	Restores the AOI selection back to red.

Change the color used to highlight the job's AOI from the Map Views System Settings tab.

Workflow settings

Workflow settings allow you to control the behavior and presentation of your workflows in the client application.

Options

Show step IDs on workflow	When enabled, the unique ID for the steps in the workflow will be displayed to the user.
Confirm procedural step completion	When enabled, the user will be asked to confirm that they want to mark the current procedural step as complete.
Auto close jobs when workflow complete	When enabled, the job will be closed after the last step in the workflow has been marked as complete.
Auto commit job workflows	When enabled, workflows will automatically be ready for execution when the job is created. When disabled, workflows are in an editable state when the job is created.
Require procedural steps to be marked as started	When enabled, users will need to mark procedural steps as started before being able to mark them as complete.

Basic workflow setting options

Selected Step Symbology

Fill Color	Represents the color of the fill of the active step in the workflow
Outline Color	Represents the color of the outline of the active step in the workflow
Outline Width	Represents the width of the outline of the active step in the workflow
Text Color	Represents the color of the text of the active step in the workflow
Restore Defaults	Restores the default active step representation: yellow fill with black outline and text

Selected step symbology details

Note:

Disabling any of the options will not change that parameter on the active step.

You can control how the active step is represented in the workflows.

Area of interest

AOI overlapping

Use these settings to control if and how the areas of interest (AOI) for your jobs are allowed to overlap.

Allow	Any job AOI can overlap another job's AOI.
Disallow	No AOI can overlap any other AOI in the system.
Disallow by Job Type	AOIs for jobs of the same job type cannot overlap each other.

AOI Overlapping settings in detail

Note:

Jobs that are closed are not considered when evaluating for overlap.

AOI Edit Extension

Use these settings to further restrict user access to data in the job's area of interest. There are three options available to you:

• Warn users when selecting features completely outside the job AOI.
• Prevent users from selecting features completely outside the job AOI.
• Allow edits to features completely outside the job AOI.

Operator controls to what behavior the above rules will be applied:

• Completely Outside—This will apply the rules above to edit operations happening to features that are entirely outside the job's area of interest. This operator will ignore features that touch the AOI boundary; this will be considered to be within the AOI.
• Outside—This will apply the rules above to edit operations happening to features that are within the job's area of interest and also features that touch the AOI.