Workflow Manager: Path vs. Step Assignment

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07-17-2014 03:13 PM
by Anonymous User
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While authoring workflows in ArcGIS Workflow Manager you might have noticed that both steps and paths can be assigned to a user or a group in your organization like below. You may have also wondered if these two forms of assignment were the same or different, and which one to use when authoring workflows.

Path.pngStep.png

It turns out they’re very similar, but they do have a few small differences that make one a better choice than the other when you want to define assignment in your workflow.

Step assignment will change the assignment of the job when the step is active in the workflow, but it will also enforce that assignment on the step too. This works great when targeting a specific user, but isn’t convenient when targeting a group. A user in the desired group must change the assignment for the job AND override the assignment on the step before they can start working. This can cause productivity delays and inconvenience your users.

With path assignment you avoid this as path assignment only changes the assignment of the job. Path assignment also ranks higher in precedence when defining the assignment of the step. That is, if a step is about to be made active and is assigned to User A but the path indicates it should be User B the final assignment will be User B when the step is active.

We recommend the use path assignment over step assignment to create more efficient and user friendly workflows in Workflow Manager!