Overview of SAS Workflow Studio

SAS Workflow Studio enables you to quickly build, organize, and reorganize the workflows and business logic at the heart of a process integration application. SAS Workflow Studio handles complex business or application process logic and many common workflow and process modeling patterns. Business process logic can be defined and implemented in SAS Workflow Studio, including data-based process flow control using logical decisions (alternate paths) and parallel paths. Process designers can use the point and click interface of SAS Workflow Studio to define processes that simplify the automation of sophisticated business processes.
SAS Workflow Studio also provides predefined and customizable policies. Process designers can use policies to define actions (for example, send an e-mail) that are triggered by a particular workflow event (for example, process start). The policy represents an action at a specific step within the workflow. Because an activity can potentially initiate multiple actions, multiple policies might be associated to a single activity. Policies can perform arbitrarily complex programmed actions, such as sending notifications as portal alerts or e-mails, altering process flow, or even providing integration points across applications by invoking SAS code or Web services. Policies can also refer to data objects stored in a workflow to add, change, or update peer processes during process execution. For example, you can define a policy for updating a process with the completion date and time of a subprocess.
Process diagrams from SAS Workflow Studio are saved as XML template files. These template files can be uploaded to the server and activated using the SAS Workflow Services. After a process is activated, it is available for instantiation by workflow-enabled applications. Processes can also be versioned using SAS Content Services