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Workflow in Teaming
Creating Formal Structures for Your Collaboration Processes
by Ken Baker
Novell Connection Magazine - July 2008

Here's an excerpt:

Many organizational processes are manual by nature, which typically makes them prone to human error, inherently inefficient, and extremely difficult to manage, track and execute. Not only can things get lost in the shuffle within these manual processes, but they often lead to significant delays in getting things done.

For example, in a traditional approval process a person might submit a purchase request to an executive administrator, who in turn forwards the request to the executive’s inbox for approval. The request can sit in the inbox for days waiting to be approved. Once approved, it moves on to Accounting where it might sit another day or two waiting to be processed and entered into the system. Additional delays can lengthen the process if anyone along the chain happens to be out sick, on vacation, or simply not able to execute their portion of the approval process in a timely manner. The bottom line is that there are simply too many manual aspects associated with these traditional processes.

Novell Teaming is all about empowering your people to collaborate and work together more effectively, and part of this empowerment comes from its built-in workflow capabilities that enable you to automate processes to save time, eliminate errors and improve overall efficiency. You already know that Novell Teaming provides a virtual workspace filled with collaboration tools that make it easier for your workgroups to share and act on the content they need to do their jobs. While its document management, calendars, discussion forums, wikis and blogs are central to enabling that workgroup collaboration, the workflow capabilities in Novell Teaming can enhance your workgroup interactions even more.

Novell Teaming workflow capabilities allow you to create a more formal structure for collaboration processes, giving you precise control over how information flows through your organization. They also give you the ability to enhance and streamline processes key to the success of your business operations.

> How Workflow Works

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It was contributed by a community member and is published "as is." It seems to have worked for at least one person, and might work for you. But please be sure to test, test, test before you do anything drastic with it.