Collector Step

This introduction article will help administrators to configure Collectors Steps within a workflow using the TDAdmin interface for the ticketing application. The user must have the administrative permissions for the respective Ticket app in TDAdmin.

Overview

A collector step joins several paths of a workflow and waits for all of the paths to complete. It will start as soon as any step links to it and will complete when all of the steps that link to it have completed.

In the below example, both the Rollout task steps and the Backout task step must be completed before the Planning and Scheduling Complete collector step will proceed to the Rollout Change step.

Users with the force-approval permission in the associated ticketing application can also manually force completion of this step through a Skip action.

Collector steps cannot be used as the starting step of a workflow and at least one next step must be specified.

Where to Find This

This feature appears in the TDAdmin and TDNext interfaces.

TDAdmin is where workflow step is configured, and TDNext is where the workflow is executed.

Navigate to configuring workflows following this path:

• TDAdmin > Applications > [Ticketing application name] > Workflows > [Workflow name] > View Builder

Using the Collector Step

Creating a Collector Step

To create a collector step:

1. In TDAdmin, click Applications in the left navigation.
2. Click the Name of the Ticketing application you want to add a workflow to.
3. In the left navigation, click Workflows.
4. On the Ticket Workflows list, click the Name of the desired workflow.
5. Click the View Builder button.
6. In the Workflow Builder, click File in the toolbar.
7. Select Check Out from the dropdown.
8. Click the New Step button in the toolbar.
9. In the New Workflow Step window, enter a Name that indicates what the step will do.
10. Select the Collector Step Type from the dropdown.
11. Provide a Description for the Collector Step (optional).
12. Click Save
13. Close the window displaying the Collector Step details.
14. Click and drag on the Collector Step’s directional arrows and move it to the desired place in the workflow
15. For each of the preceding steps from the branches feeding into the Collector Step, click and drag from the action to draw connectors to the Collector Step.

Gotchas & Pitfalls

Ensuring That All Steps Can Complete

When planning the steps that precede a collector step, remember that the collector step will wait for all steps that feed into it to complete. If your workflow has conditional logic that feeds directly or indirectly into a collector step, those collector steps may never successfully complete.

In the following example, there is a Privacy Review Exemption approval step that determines whether the Privacy Review task needs to be executed. If the exemption is granted, it feeds directly into the Planning and Scheduling Complete collector step. If the exemption is not granted, the Privacy Review task needs to be completed before feeding into the collector step.

In this workflow, the Planning and Scheduling Complete step will never automatically complete. The collector step sees that three steps are feeding into it and expects that all three need to be completed before the collector step can proceed. However, due to the conditional logic of the Privacy Review Exemption step, at most two steps can complete at any time here.

To avoid this issue, administrators can use a branch step to consolidate the approval options before reaching the collector step.

In the above example, the branch step will always be reached, either as a result of approving the Privacy Review Exemption step or completing the Privacy Review task. Because the Planning and Scheduling Complete collector step now sees that only two steps are feeding into it, the workflow will proceed as normal.

Examples

Have a look at the attached New Hire Set-up Workflow example PDF to view the 29 steps including branch and collectors, in this onboarding workflow.