A web application for workflow and document management is the project that I am presently working currently in my current organization. The web application creates a work-item (WI) upon receiving either an email or a scan document. A WI is a unit of work or a task to perform that is passed through the workflow. The WI moves through various worksteps (WS) which determine a path in the workflow. A WS can be understood as a stop wherein an action is taken for completing the task. This post concerns with WI created through emails only. In the workflow, initial two WS are designed for defining a path in the workflow for the WI based on the email and for confirming the defined path.
Each WI, created through an email, includes data related to email such as from address, to address, email subject, and email date, along with associated documents. The documents include email body as a first document, and attachments in the email as rest of the documents. However, not all emails are necessary. For example, read receipts, spam emails, advertisements, promotional emails, are some of the emails which also end up as a WI. Such WI not only increases the number of task items present in a user’s dashboard but also reduces productivity of user as more time is spent in sorting and taking appropriate action on the WI. Most likely, ‘discard’ or ‘delete’ action is taken on such WI. The ‘discard’ action, however, does not remove the documents from the database. These documents occupy a lot of unwanted space in the database over a period of time. No matter how many email filters are placed, these emails do creep into the workflow. Also, conditional filtering based on subject is not feasible in all situations.
Therefore, in my understanding, such unwanted emails creeping into the workflow is an obvious problem since the WI is being created upon receipt of an email. However, we could not forecast such problem and the impact of such problem on the databases at the initial stages. The impact was realized after 4 years when database got filled earlier than projected timelines.
A solution to free up space occupied by unwanted emails in the database was removal of all such documents associated with ‘discarded’ WI from the database. We, along with Vendor Development Team, outlined the solution as below:
1. Identify WIs which have been discarded
2. Identify documents in the identified WIs and place is separate folder
3. Delete the identified documents.
Of course, this solution requires custom utilities for performing all the three functions. Since this problem was not anticipated earlier, custom utilities are being developed.
This led me to wonder had this obvious problem been anticipated earlier, a solution could have been incorporated into workflow itself. Accordingly, the following solution is being outlined:
1. Upon selecting ‘action’ as ‘discard’ in the first WS, the WI is moved to second WS for confirmation of the action by clicking on ‘done’/ ‘submit’ button given in the WI.
2. In the second WS, the action is confirmed by selecting ‘confirm’/ ‘approve’ option.
3. A separate button ‘Purge-Submit’ is provided along with the ‘submit’ button in the second WS.
4. Upon clicking the ‘Purge-Submit’ button, the documents will be deleted freeing up the space in the database and the WI will be moved to ‘Exit’ WS.
5. The WI details may also be moved to an entirely different table which will only list all such WS to minimize dependency on main tables.
Some of the benefits from the above solution are:
1. Simultaneous deletion of documents as and when decision is taken to discard the WI.
2. Efficient management of database as future projections can be made based on actual working data.
3. Main tables will only include details about work related WI.
Each WI, created through an email, includes data related to email such as from address, to address, email subject, and email date, along with associated documents. The documents include email body as a first document, and attachments in the email as rest of the documents. However, not all emails are necessary. For example, read receipts, spam emails, advertisements, promotional emails, are some of the emails which also end up as a WI. Such WI not only increases the number of task items present in a user’s dashboard but also reduces productivity of user as more time is spent in sorting and taking appropriate action on the WI. Most likely, ‘discard’ or ‘delete’ action is taken on such WI. The ‘discard’ action, however, does not remove the documents from the database. These documents occupy a lot of unwanted space in the database over a period of time. No matter how many email filters are placed, these emails do creep into the workflow. Also, conditional filtering based on subject is not feasible in all situations.
Therefore, in my understanding, such unwanted emails creeping into the workflow is an obvious problem since the WI is being created upon receipt of an email. However, we could not forecast such problem and the impact of such problem on the databases at the initial stages. The impact was realized after 4 years when database got filled earlier than projected timelines.
A solution to free up space occupied by unwanted emails in the database was removal of all such documents associated with ‘discarded’ WI from the database. We, along with Vendor Development Team, outlined the solution as below:
1. Identify WIs which have been discarded
2. Identify documents in the identified WIs and place is separate folder
3. Delete the identified documents.
Of course, this solution requires custom utilities for performing all the three functions. Since this problem was not anticipated earlier, custom utilities are being developed.
This led me to wonder had this obvious problem been anticipated earlier, a solution could have been incorporated into workflow itself. Accordingly, the following solution is being outlined:
1. Upon selecting ‘action’ as ‘discard’ in the first WS, the WI is moved to second WS for confirmation of the action by clicking on ‘done’/ ‘submit’ button given in the WI.
2. In the second WS, the action is confirmed by selecting ‘confirm’/ ‘approve’ option.
3. A separate button ‘Purge-Submit’ is provided along with the ‘submit’ button in the second WS.
4. Upon clicking the ‘Purge-Submit’ button, the documents will be deleted freeing up the space in the database and the WI will be moved to ‘Exit’ WS.
5. The WI details may also be moved to an entirely different table which will only list all such WS to minimize dependency on main tables.
Some of the benefits from the above solution are:
1. Simultaneous deletion of documents as and when decision is taken to discard the WI.
2. Efficient management of database as future projections can be made based on actual working data.
3. Main tables will only include details about work related WI.
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