Interact Capabilities

[hisham.siddiq]

Hey Community,

I'm trying to implement Interact as a workflow solution for my team and I had a few questions which I'm having a hard time figuring out and hopefully some of you can help me with this.

1. Can interact handle attachments with Personal Identifiable Information (PII) and where are the attachments saved?
2. I know interact is built to help communication between human workers and automations but can interact be used to assign work between human workers (human to human)
3. Is it possible to track all the completed work in Interact like a log of work completed over the past year for example?

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Hisham Siddiq
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[zdenek.kabatek]

Hello, Hisham,

let me answer some of the questions with my available knowledge.

1. Can interact handle attachments with PII - I am no sure I understand the question. What is the difference between PII attachment and not PII attachment? Concerning second part - the files are stored in the database - FileServiceDB (if you keep the default naming) in the table dbo.Files.
2. Well, you could achieve that but the form would have to be designed that way from the very beginning - you would need to have a drop down where human would select another human - then inevitably it would go through Digital Worker who would take the data and regenerate the same form for another human from the drop down. It is not the optimal way but it can be done in case you do not want to use standard workflow tool as bear in mind that Interact is tool for Human in the Loop.
3. Very good question - I have just finished analyzing this from different perspective (I will post my question shortly) but I would say it should be possible as long as you do not delete records from AuditDB. In here you have every change of the form (well, there are just two statuses IMHO in case the form is created by digital worker - received in user Inbox and submitted by user. I have avoided the approval as it would bring additional complexity but I believe it would be recorded as well). So if you want to record some flow of your forms you would need to generate some field on your forms which would uniquely identify the flow through various statuses/forms/steps and then you could get the lifecycle of that "process". See attached screen shot - two rows for the form which was pushed by robot to a user and the second one is when the user submitted form back to robot.

Regards

Zdenek

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Zdeněk Kabátek
Head of Professional Services
NEOOPS
http://www.neoops.com/
Europe/Prague
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[hisham.siddiq]

Hey Zdeněk Kabátek,

Thank you for your reply, it's really helping me.

I have a few follow up questions -

1. PII attachment is an attachment with personal identifiable information (like address, bank account number, social security number, etc.). Is FileServiceDB provided with interact? How do I get access to this database?
2. Really good Idea and it shouldn't be a problem since my team doesn't have a workflow tool and we are trying to create it through interact.
3. Basically my team was offered interact with our current blueprism contract so my question is is the FIleServiceDB and th AuditDB included with interact license. I understand we have to also download blueprism hub for interact. But this is really good example you have shown

Regards,

Hisham

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Hisham Siddiq
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[hisham.siddiq]

I basically wanted to know which of these requirements can be met realistically through interact and blueprism -

1. As a manager, I want to be able move work front to back (from either the client to the back office or from the back office to the vendors or from the advice center to the back office) for fulfillment

2. As a manager, I want to be able move the work within the back office between teams and individuals based on resource capabilites and availabilities

3. As an analyst, I want to be able to acknowledge that a request has been received (when assigned) with a certain timeline to complete it and be able to provide proof of fulfilment of the request after it has been completed.

4. As a manager, I want to have the ability for end to end management of a single case

5. As a manager, I want to see all the work that is currently being worked on by my team and if there's any high priority requests, so that I can plan upcoming work

6. As a manager, I want to see a report of time spent on completing a request, so that I can track the request lifecycle improvement over time

7. As an advisor, I want to be informed of all the mandatory required details in the request, so that the request I'm fulfilling meets the standard documented in the procedure

8. As an advisor, I want to see the book of record contain all authority information for certain clients related to the request in view, so that I'm aware of all the information needed to fulfill the request

9. As a manager, I want to have audit trails of the work being done along with timestamps and specific meta data associated with each case

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Hisham Siddiq
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[zdenek.kabatek]

Hi, Hisham,

I am pretty busy this week and the answer would take me significant time which I do not have. So basically what you wrote are the requirements for a workflow tool and Interact is not the workflow tool as I mentioned before. Did you check Blue Prism Chorus solution? If you are patient enough I may answer this topic early next week.

Regards

Zdenek

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Zdeněk Kabátek
Head of Professional Services
NEOOPS
http://www.neoops.com/
Europe/Prague
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[hisham.siddiq]

No worries since I needed some clarification on those by early next week anyway

Thanks again

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Hisham Siddiq
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[zdenek.kabatek]

Hello, Hisham,

well, I would say that my comments are going to be based on my experience from Interact implementations and might not be complete but I will do my best. I also do not consider some features which might be planned or are raised on Ideation Portal.

Let's go.

1. at this moment I am not aware that this would be possible even though the team concept is there. This is rather workflow tool feature not Human in the Loop.
2. the same as in point 1
3. this could be designed within a Blue Prism process and somehow (not very user friendly) achieved
4. this is not possible again Interact is Human in the Loop. What you need is a workflow tool (Blue Prism Chorus)
5. see point 4
6. I raised enhancement request for Interact as it would be nice to have this. Again I believe that workflow tools have got this natively implemented.
7. That is possible to design in Interact form and without mandatory fields you can't submit the form.
8. That should be possible that robot gather all the information for you to make the right decision. That is basically what Interact is designed for. If I understand your description correctly.
9.  There is certain information as a part of AuditDB but the question is whether it is sufficient for your purposes.

Regards

Zdenek 

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Zdeněk Kabátek
Head of Professional Services
NEOOPS
http://www.neoops.com/
Europe/Prague
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[hisham.siddiq]

Hey Zdenek,

Thank you again for helping me during your busy schedule. 

I understand your speaking from experience and you are right I'm looking for a workflow tool but since I have access to interact included in company's contract, I was wondering if its possible to use interact in a similar way. 

1. I was thinking maybe this can be achieve using the interact VBO's in a Blueprism process to read current form and create new forms (with updated information from management) to send to specific users based on assignments by the manage
2. Same as 1
5. Is it not possible to filter the submissions in Interact by users?
7. Could we not design this in a process by using the submissin times for the initial froms to user and when the user submits a completion

Also can you go over my follow up questions from Comment number 3 in this thread?

Thanks again.
Hisham Siddiq

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Hisham Siddiq
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[joefarr]

Hi Hisham

I think it would be really useful for you to get in touch with your Customer Success Manager or Account Director as they'll be able to talk to you about your specific use cases or ask for additional support to ascertain whether they are possible with Interact as it is currently. 

Thank you for the detailed responses @Zdeněk Kabátek , I agree with all your points. Interact cannot currently be leveraged as a Workflow management tool, it's purpose is to allow users to interact with automated processes before and during runtime to provide them with information required to complete a work item. 

To your additional questions in comment 3, the databases mentioned are all created when Hub/Interact are installed but it will be a challenge with Interact to create the workflow management tool you need. 

On the ones above:
1. I was thinking maybe this can be achieve using the interact VBO's in a Blueprism process to read current form and create new forms (with updated information from management) to send to specific users based on assignments by the manage. This functionality is available using the Interact Remote API and could be accounted for in the process.
2. Same as 1
5. Is it not possible to filter the submissions in Interact by users? Filtering is possible but there is no visibility of items for other users. Each users view is of their own items. 
7. Could we not design this in a process by using the submissin times for the initial froms to user and when the user submits a completion This is possible, yes.


Interact Teams will address a lot of the functionality you are missing, as far as I can tell from your comments, but as Zdeněk said, this is not yet available and currently doesn't have a set release date.

Hope this helps

Cheers

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Joe Farr
Senior Product Specialist
Blue Prism Limited
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[zdenek.kabatek]

Hi, Hisham,

my comments to your points:
1.  theoretically, you could run another form which might give you an overview (as a manager) of what each user have. I do not know whether there is an action for that but theoretically this could be a way. I may think this through and look at Interact actions if there is anything which supports this as it is an interesting idea.
2. as above
5. I am afraid that there is no concept at this moment for superior/subordinate from the user perspective and you assign the form to the role and whoever has got this role can process the form.
7. well, it would not tell you the time when a user opens form and goes for coffee or chitchat with a colleague and the form is submitted after an hour. Or you submit a form to a user and you get time stamp but the user accesses the form another day and submits it then. The information is then misleading. I was analyzing this thoroughly as I had similar requirement from a client and concluded that there is no way how you can get precise and reliable value. That's why I raised enhancement request on ideation portal.

Regards

Zdenek

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Zdeněk Kabátek
Head of Professional Services
NEOOPS
http://www.neoops.com/
Europe/Prague
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