New Workflow Features in R12

Workflow Directory Service Bulk Synchronization

• Worklist Flexfields
• Digital Signatures
• Notification Mailer
• Workflow Engine
• Business Event System

Workflow Directory Service Bulk Synchronization
The Workflow Directory Service Bulk Synchronization concurrent program can now recreate a directory service partition that includes roles that are part of a role hierarchy.

Worklist Flexfields
Oracle E-Business Suite system administrators can now promote information stored in notification message attributes from the notification detail page to a personal worklist view for viewing and sorting

Digital Signatures
The digital signature infrastructure now supports the following:
Ability to digitally sign the entire notification contents, including subject, message body, response attributes, and response action
Ability to verify the signed documents through an evidence store user interface after the signing process
Enhancement of the notification purge program to exclude purging of signature-enabled notifications

Notification Mailer
The notification mailer now includes the following new and improved features:
Simplified configuration:
The notification mailer configuration wizard is now split into basic and advanced pages.
Override address:
The test address is set in a new Set Override Address page and requires a verification code to be entered before the notification mailer begins sending notifications to that address.
Enhanced error handling for mass failures:
In cases where many users have been set up with invalid email addresses, the workflow directory service is updated to no longer send e-mails to those users.
System alerts integration:
When the Workflow Mailer Service encounters errors, it sends a system alert to provide easy visibility to system administrators and applications DBAs as to the status of the Workflow Mailer Service without having to review log files.
SSL Support:
The Workflow Mailer Service can now connect to IMAP and SMTP mail servers a using SSL authentication.

Workflow Engine
The Workflow Engine now includes a bulk array interface for creating and starting processes. These bulk array interfaces offer significant performance improvements over the single work item APIs when starting many workflows at the same time, such as in a batch program.

Business Event System
The Business Event System (BES) now includes:
Event and subscription caching at the PL/SQL layer:
When a business event is raised, the Event Dispatcher queries a cache before running SQL on database tables to identify the corresponding event subscriptions in order to reduce SQL executions. This feature provides performance gains for event subscriptions processed within a single session, such as batch programs or high volume data entry scenarios.

PL/SQL rule function optimization:
PL/SQL packages are generated for all registered rule functions during installation. BES calls a generated PL/SQL package statically by passing the function name to be executed. This feature eliminates the overhead of the dynamic SQL used to call rule functions prior to Release 12.
Declarative event subscription error handling:
You can choose between the following “On Error” conditions when defining new subscriptions:
Stop and Rollback:
Stop processing any further subscriptions and roll back those that have already been executed.

Skip to Next:
Roll back only the errored subscription and then continue processing subsequent subscriptions.