When it comes to managing capital construction projects, more than 200 business processes need to be performed by the different entities involved in the project delivery. Each will have a role in executing those processes. Each business process will have an input template to ensure capturing its trust-worthy data by the assigned individual and a workflow to ensure enforcing transparency and accountability when it comes to submitting, reviewing, approving, or rejecting those processes. Of course, those templates need to be attached with their supportive documents and linked to their relevant records and email messages.
A Project Management Information System (PMIS) like PMWeb is required to digital transform the execution of the many business processes associated with the delivery of capital construction projects. The PMWeb workflow assigned to a business process maps how the review and approval/rejection tasks are given to the individuals responsible for performing those tasks and the duration allotted to each job with the allowed actions to be taken by those individuals. The workflow could also include the conditions and rules required for enforcing the approval authority levels detailed in the project management plan for business processes.
The individuals who are set accountable for performing those processes could represent different entities and be located in other parts of the world. Therefore, all PMIS solutions, including PMWeb, must allow the option to send email messages to notify those individuals of the workflow tasks assigned for their action on business processes. With the hundreds of email messages daily received by those individuals, there is a high chance that they might miss some PMWeb business process workflow email notifications. The likelihood of this occurring is high if email notifications for all business processes have an identical layout. Therefore, customizing those notifications is very important to bring the needed visibility when they are received.
The workflow email notification shown below on the left is an example of how PMWeb default notification will be received. Although it provides all critical information associated with the notification, it fails to bring the desired attention it deserves from the recipient. On the other hand, the workflow email notification shown on the right is an example of a customized notification. To start with, the personalized notification states the process name being “RFI” in large fonts on a blue-colored background to highlight what it is for. The background color could be selected to be in different colors for site communications, commercial, HSE, quality, procurement, risk, and other business processes categories. The needed PMWeb default data fields for the workflow email notification are displayed on the Grey and Yellow bands. Also, the business process’s content is displayed on the email notification to enable the reader to have an immediate understanding of what the notification is all about. The bottom of the email details the comments made by the individual who has executed the previous task. The Green button is designed to drive the notification recipient on what needs to be done to proceed with the workflow process. Those customizations and many others will for sure bring the necessary attention to those workflow email notifications.
PMWeb provides the option to customize workflow email notifications for each business process type and for each action type that could be taken in a business process workflow. For example, those could be submitted, review, proceed, return, resubmit, withdraw, reject, resubmit, branch (for selections or approval authority levels), user delegate, team input request, review complete and final approval. The rich text workflow email notification template can be created using PMWeb form design tools, copy and paste from MS Excel or MS Word templates or imported as an HTML design template. PMWeb provides a list of all data fields that can be inserted into the notification template.
The workflow actions will be the actions that will be made available for each task defined in the workflow and are available for the individuals involved in the business process. PMWeb also provides the option to display those actions with values that could differ from the default values already defined in PMWeb.
When an individual is required to take any action on a business process, assuming, for example, the Request for Information (RFI) process, the workflow email notification template will be automatically selected depending on the individual’s action. The individual could add comments to the workflow task, which will appear in the workflow email notification if the comment field was chosen to be displayed. PMWeb also provides the option to carbon copy (CC) other individuals who could be PMWeb or non-PMWeb users.
The intended recipients would receive the workflow email notification and all attachments if they were defined to be added to the workflow task. Those recipients can click on the document hyperlink to access the original record in PMWeb, open the attachments or even forward the email itself to others if needed. That customized workflow email notification provides all required information for precise, easy understand and actionable reports that can be searched for their content, attach, or shared with other individuals.
