TaskCentre Workflow via Mobile Device

I’ve been a proponent of TaskCentre Workflow for a while now. It’s simple to set up and use and can extend the reach of your CRM and ERP beyond traditional users. And now I’ve got it working very nicely on my Mobile Phone, actually a Blackberry Torch, though any smart phone will do. And the TaskCentre system I am using is in the Cloud. What a perfect combination.

So How did I do it?

First of all I needed a system in the Cloud. This was pretty easy to set up on Amazon EC2. I installed TaskCentre and built my workflow examples. The only thing to consider is the size of the screen so it displays well on your mobile device.

The slightly awkward part is that when TaskCentre generates the URL for the Workflow Job it does not know about the external host name that is used to access the job from my browser so I had to cheat to do this. Turns out it was easier than I thought.

I use a little bit of VB Scripting to make a friendly “click here” link rather than displaying the URL so I just needed to add a bit of code to substitute the root name in the URL for the external host name. I added a VB Script Step in the task to do that. The code for that is:

Dim InURL,OutURL

InURL=Steps(“Raise Customer Approval”).OutputURL
OutURL=”<a href=”"”
OutURL=OutURL + Replace(InURL,”ServerName”,”WorkflowServer.Fisher-Technology.com”,1,1)
OutURL=OutURL + “”">Click Here</a>”

Variables(“DisplayURL”)=OutURL

The final variable “DisplayURL” is used in the format step that build the notification email to display the friendly link.

So now you have no excuse not to deploy TaskCentre Workflow in your mobile world.