A software company can use the Blueprints feature to track and manage the software development lifecycle. Various blueprint actions are needed to mark the present status of each stage, for example -- when a feature request is received, or when the development starts, or when issues are found, and so on. The relevant team then moves the blueprint stage (status) to the next stage, using transitions, once they complete their work items. This way the entire development cycle is efficiently tracked, and fully automated using workflow actions that are triggered at each blueprint transition (action).
The following is an illustration of the above use case which can be accomplished using Blueprints.
Process Flow
Steps
Step 1: Navigation to Blueprints section
In your application, navigate to Workflow > Blueprints > New Blueprint
Step 2: Create blueprint by
Step 3: Add Stages - These are the different milestones in the process. For a software development lifecycle process, Feature Approved, Feature Developed, and Testing Complete can be some of the stages.
Click Add Stages and drag-and-drop the newly created Stage:
Step 4: Add transitions - These are the intermediate phase between two states. They act as a link between the two states. Transitions are clickable buttons, which are used to move the blueprint to the next stage. Using the same example, Approve Feature, Development Started, and Bugs Found can be some of the transitions. When the Approve Feature transition is performed, the blueprint stage is moved to Request Approved stage.
Click on the + icon to add a transition between the stages:
After Transitions actions are used to configure workflows that are triggered when the transition button is clicked. For example, we can use the send mail task to send an automated email notification to customers when their requests are approved.
Clicking on Add New Action under the "After" header gives options to configure various workflow actions:
The following image shows the various workflow actions that can be configured:
Once a transition is marked as a common transition it will appear for all the blueprint stages by default. This helps when we want a particular transition to be enabled for all the blueprint stages without having to create the transition manually for each stage.
Configure Parallel Transition: When multiple transitions are required to move from one stage to another then it known as parallel transition. For eg: hostel fee, college fee and book fee all should be paid only then the record should be marked as fee paid.
Click the highlighted icon next to the transition and toggle ON Parallel Transition.
Once a transition is marked as a parallel transition we can add additional transitions between the blueprint stages. In simple words, it lets us add more than one transition between stages. The "+" icon is used to configure the additional transitions.
Step 5: Click Save Blueprint.
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