Tips and Tricks to use ITONICS Workflow

How does ITONICS Workflow help me?

Workflows provide a standardized, consistent, and efficient way of managing how elements move forward. They guide users through clearly defined actions and paths, and automate the parts that would otherwise be done by hand.

Typical uses:

• Facilitate and manage ideation campaigns to ensure all submitted ideas are validated and evaluated before they move on.
• Manage the planning, execution, and monitoring of innovation projects, so that tasks are completed in the right order, milestones are met, and team members are aware of their responsibilities and deadlines.
• Manage the selection and prioritization of growth initiatives for inclusion in a portfolio, so that initiatives are aligned with strategic goals, resources are allocated effectively, and risks are managed appropriately.
• Enhance collaboration and communication among the team members involved, by making who acts next explicit and visible on the element itself.

Tips and tricks

Understand runtime execution

A workflow is executed at runtime: an element enters when its start trigger fires, and the workflow then advances from node to node. Each node is evaluated at the moment it is reached, against the values the element has at that moment, and it is not evaluated again later.

Automatic nodes therefore act on what is filled in now. If a condition reads a property that is still empty, it cannot match:

• Conditional run — no path validates, and the branch ends.
• Switch — the default path is taken, or the branch ends if none is set.
• Filter — the criteria are not met, and execution stops there.

The workflow does not resume when the property is filled in afterwards; it has already passed that point at runtime.

How to make sure a value exists before it is checked. Several options, which can be combined:

• Require the property in the element configuration, so it is filled in during creation.
• Set a default value, so there is always a fallback to check against.
• Put a Manual form node before the condition, asking the user for exactly the property the condition reads.
• Put an Update element node before the condition, writing a predefined value.
• Start the workflow later — use the Matching elements trigger with a criterion such as “property is not empty”, so the element only enters once the value exists.
• Insert a Delay node before the condition, giving users time to complete the element first.

Fork inside one workflow instead of building several

Routing conditions read the properties on an element, so one workflow can cover cases that would otherwise each need their own.

• Put a Switch on a property, such as Department or Category, and every value takes its own path from there, with its own form and its own reviewers.
• Building one workflow per department and filtering each at the start node means five places to edit. Forking inside one workflow means maintaining one.

More tips

1. Get a first draft on the canvas quickly by describing the workflow to PRISM, then refine the nodes manually.
2. Think about who acts at each point: assignees on manual form nodes, reviewers on manual review nodes, and the approval rules that let a review be validated.
3. Keep workflows easy to understand and follow. Avoid unnecessary complexity, and focus on the steps that genuinely need a decision or an input.
4. Use the Change status and Update element automation nodes to keep an element’s state current without asking a user to maintain it by hand.
5. Use Kanban boards, grouped by a status or dropdown property, to keep track of the progress and health of your projects.
6. Duplicate a workflow before experimenting with it, and use version history to roll back if an edit does not work out.

For the full configuration reference, see Workflow Configuration. If you are moving from the previous version, Migration to the wokflow builder v2 maps what became what.