MDG Material workflow: Adding a button to a workflow step

The three major technical areas of an MDG application are:
Data Model
User Interface
Workflow process

Implementing a customer specific requirement involves changing one or more of the above technical areas.
In this blog, we will discuss a requirement that involves changing the workflow process.

Workflow is very central to MDG scenarios. Each of the MDG scenarios of create, change, block or mass processing of master data has a workflow process. Depending on the scenario, in any given workflow step, a user may perform data enrichment or approval of the change request.

Generally speaking, that are various aspects to a end-to-end workflow process: the number workflow steps, user roles responsible for each workflow step and actions available at each step, the UI display for each workflow step etc. These aspects of the workflow process are specific to each customer and their MDG implementation. The customer requirement is often carried over from the customer's existing master data management (mdm) strategy. The customer specific requirements may araise from something that the business experts are used to or it may be specific to the customer's industry. Partly because several elements of the existing mdm strategy works well for customers, and partly to reduce the end-user-training overhead for the new mdg system. Irrespective of the reason, changes to workflow process are quite common in any MDG implementation.

As MDG implementer, you customize the out-of-box solution to customer's needs.
So today lets discuss a simple scenario of how to add a custom button to a workflow step. These custom buttons (displayed at the top of the UI when user selects a workflow item from inbox) have a custom behavior.
Lets split the implementation into two parts.
1. Make a custom action (a button) appear in the UI.
2. Associate a custom behavior with this button.

In this blog post we discuss the simple steps to achieve the first, namely, make a custom button appear on the UI. This is a simple process that only takes a few steps.

1. Create a custom action.
2. Associate the custom action with a step type.
3. Test the change.

1. Create a custom action.

Navigate to tcode mdgimg. General Settings> Process Modeling> WorkFlow>Define Actions for Change Request UI.

Click on 'New Entries' to create an Action. When saving this change, you will be prompted to provide a customizing request. Create/Select a customizing request number. Save the entry.

A new action  is added.

2. Associate the custom action with a step type.
Back in MDGIMG, navigate to General Settings> Process Modeling> WorkFlow>Define Step Types and Assign Actions.

Select a Step Type that you want the button to be assigned to. Remember, to select a step that is part of the process and that is available for the user in question. These considerations will be revisited when we configure the BRFPlus decision tables in the next part of this blog.

Once row is selected, click on 'Assign Actions'. This kind of navigation is not very intuitive to newbies, but will be used across various parts of MDG configuration.

3. Test the change.
Once the above configurations are done, go through the workflow process till it reaches the above configured step type.

Notice that the button is available to end user.
In the next blog post, I'll show you how to add functionality to the button.

This link has numerous related MDG image posts.