Altiris Workflow Solution

Altiris Workflow Solution is a new tool to help automate your IT services.

The most important thing to know about Workflow Solution is that it is a general-purpose development tool for .NET with a graphical design interface. You can use it to build a system for any purpose, not just for IT services.

The reason it fits so well with IT services is that:

• They usually have a workflow business model rather than, say, a transaction processing model.
• Altiris has provided all the components to automate typical service management tasks.

The main features of Workflow Solution are:

1. Drag and drop design interface similar to Visio
2. Design time components that specify the parameters required to generate the .NET code
3. Integration components that enable input from or output to other systems, for example, AD, SQL databases, SharePoint lists, MS Office
4. Components for integration with other Altiris solutions (for example the helpdesk or CMDB)
5. Web portal for publishing workflow forms and reports.

If you can imagine laying out your process in Visio, then you can produce an automated production-grade workflow of the process with Workflow Solution.

You can do this within IT, without getting caught up in the backlog of IS projects and business priorities.

Examples:

• Leavers and starters
• Moves and changes
• New computer or new software request
• License and asset management; change management; problem management
• Data transformation from one format to another
• IT services portal.

This is probably the gap that some people would be thinking of using SharePoint for; or Oracle Forms; or perhaps SAP Netweaver. Altiris Workflow Solution is a much more focused on IT-type workflows and consequently much easier to use.

If you'd like to find out more about how we can help with your workflow automation, please contact us.