Clients are the most general objects in ProcMan. Logically they can represent something in a real world, for example customers, organization units, etc. Technically, they are containers of other objects definitions and process instances (processes in the Work list). Clients in ProcMan are organized hierarchically. In the top of the clients hierarchy is always the client ROOT, which is the ancestor of all other clients. Each client can have any number of children clients. The client hierarchy in ProcMan can be arbitrarily deep. The definition of other objects like roles, user accounts and process definitions as well as assignments of roles to user accounts is being done in clients. Each definition of such objects and each role assignment in a client, are only visible and effective in the client itself and in its descendant clients. Process instances (processes in the plant list) that are assigned to a client are only visible in the respective client itself.
Click Clients to start the client administration dialog. Beware that you can administrate in this dialog only descendants’ clients. Sample: you are logged in client ROOT then you can administrate the descendants of client ROOT.
After the dialog has been started, the list of already defined descendant clients of the logged in client is displayed (see picture below). If the current client has no descendants a message informing about this fact is displayed instead.
This dialog can be left by clicking the Cancel button. It can also be left at any time, even in the client definition forms for new and edited clients, by selecting another function from the ProcMan menu. The last entries are discarded.
A new client can be defined by clicking the New button in the clients list form. After that a form with the client definition fields appears (see picture below).
After filling the fields in this form and clicking the OK button the new client is created and appears in the clients list. By clicking the Cancel button the dialog returns to the clients list without creating a new client.
The field Name has to be filled with the name of the new client. The name of the client can contain simple alphanumerical characters (ä, š, ô, etc. are not allowed), underscores, dots and spaces. Spaces at the beginning and the end are ignored. After submitting the form the name is converted into uppercase.
In the field Parent the parent client of the new client has to be selected.
The field Description can be filled with a textual description of the new client. It is a free text, which can contain any printable characters. It also can be left empty.
With the field Calendar you assign a calendar to the client. The calendar specifies which days shall be handled as free days for this client (e.g. every Sunday, Christmas days, etc.). This can be relevant when the user makes date entries in the general process data. Calendars can be defined in the Calendar administration dialog. If the calendar which shall be used by the new client is not defined yet, this field can be left empty. It can be set later by editing the client or in the Calendar assignment administration dialog. If there is no calendar specified for the client then all days are handled as working days.
The check-box Allow to select this client on login specifies whether the users can select this client for to login in. Beware that this option is only a helper to reduce the list of clients displayed at the login time. If you disallow all clients where a user would normally be able to login, the effect of this option will be switched off and the user will be able to select from the complete list of clients in which he is authorized to login.
The check-box Enabled specifies whether the client can be used in ProcMan or not. If a client is not enabled, all its descendants’ clients are also disabled (even if they are set to be enabled).
Select a client from clients list form (checking the radio-button at the beginning of the table row) and click the Edit button. Alternatively a client definition can be edited also by clicking on the client name in the table of the clients list form. After that a form with the client definition fields appears. This form is the same like the form for a new client except, that the field Parent is read-only and cannot be changed.
Select a client from clients list form (checking the radio-button at the beginning of the table row) and click the Delete button in the clients list form. Beware that this action also deletes all descendant clients and all processes for this clients. To avoid deleting clients by mistake only disabled clients can be deleted. An alternative to the deletion of a client is to disable the client.
Select a client from the client list form (checking the radio-button at the beginning of the table row) and click the Into Transfer Case button in the client list form. After the selected client has been added into the Transfer Case you can add another client or another objects into the Transfer Case or continue with other administration work. For more information about the Transfer Case see the description of the Transfer Case tool in this document.