Lawson Process Automation

It is the Infor/Lawson 10 version of ProcessFlow Integrator. What information are you looking for?

Our Lawson account manager said we could use LPA with 9.0.1.9.  We need to become more automated.  I was wondering about some of the uses.  I have been looking for information on LPA, but I have yet to find much on it.  I thought I would like to find out what others have done so that it might spark some ideas on where we could use it.

You could look at the documentation for ProcessFlow and that will give you what you need. Lawson is developing their documentation for LPA but it will pretty much be the same. There are additional features to account for both S3 and Landmark, but on the whole the things you can do with PFI, you can do with LPA.

Your question is about use of this product, so although I am still on Lawson Process Flow and not yet on Lawson Process Automation, the usage answers are relevant. I use PFI extensively, for almost everything. There are about 75 flows in production with maybe another dozen in development or QA now. All of our interfaces are ProcessFlows, I have PF's that our users trigger to transfer files from the Lawson UNIX server to their Windows servers so none of our users need to sign on to UNIX, I have a flow that adds/updates/inactivates our lawson user id's (RMID's), flows that build our ACH files and will soon run a script to securely FTP them directly to the banks, flows that build the Benefit EDI832 files, 23 of our Personnel Actions are work-flow enabled (approval process from submitting manager to VP approvals, Action change notifications, etc.), and a few miscellaneous ones that do things like notify the managers when their employee reviews are due or overdue, update the email addresses on HR11, and maintenance ones like automating the WF Move to History, WF Purge History, and flows that report work units in progress or failed. I'm working now on a flow that will follow the nightly PA100 and calculate and update the benefit dates on HR11 and then trigger portal job BN100. There isn't many limits to what PFI (soon LPA) can do, and I can't imagine what it would be like without it.

I was remiss in not talking about two of the interfaces/flows that save our users tons of time. I have a daily interface file from our external Applicant system that a flow picks up to add the new applicants to PA31. I have another daily interface file from the same external system of the new hires, which a flow picks up and uses to build the HIRE actions on PA52.4, which the nightly PA100 then processes. In the queue is another flow that will use the tax data on the Applicant system to update the PR113 after the employee is hired.
Our HR core team is wonderful in thinking of new ways to automate or provide information to our managers - and it is rewarding to be able to use a tool like PFI to complete those ideas.

If you are looking for ideas...requisition approvals, purchase order confirmations (Automated and manual), approval aging report, INR attestations and many others. Lawson has a lot of delivered flows and services which might spark even more ideas.

How many IT personnel do you have do you have dedicated 75% or more in
support of your overall Lawson implementation?

On Thu, Aug 9, 2012 at 1:18 PM, wrote:

> [image: LawsonGuru.com Logo] <https://www.lawsonguru.com/> Lawson
> ProcessFlow Forum Notification A message was posted to a thread you are
> tracking. *RE: Lawson Process Automation* Posted by: *BarbR*
> 08/09/2012 12:14 PM Your question is about use of this product, so
> although I am still on Lawson Process Flow and not yet on Lawson Process
> Automation, the usage answers are relevant. I use PFI extensively, for
> almost everything. There are about 75 flows in production with maybe
> another dozen in development or QA now. All of our interfaces are
> ProcessFlows, I have PF's that our users trigger to transfer files from the
> Lawson UNIX server to their Windows servers so none of our users need to
> sign on to UNIX, I have a flow that adds/updates/inactivates our lawson
> user id's (RMID's), flows that build our ACH files and will soon run a
> script to securely FTP them directly to the banks, flows that build the
> Benefit EDI832 files, 23 of our Personnel Actions are work-flow enabled
> (approval process from submitting manager to VP approvals, Action change
> notifications, etc.), and a few miscellaneous ones that do things like
> notify the managers when their employee reviews are due or overdue, update
> the email addresses on HR11, and maintenance ones like automating the WF
> Move to History, WF Purge History, and flows that report work units in
> progress or failed. I'm working now on a flow that will follow the nightly
> PA100 and calculate and update the benefit dates on HR11 and then trigger
> portal job BN100. There isn't many limits to what PFI (soon LPA) can do,
> and I can't imagine what it would be like without it.
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>
> https://www.lawsonguru.co...-process-automation/
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Over .75? That would just be one - me. I'm about 1.15 to 1.2 - salaried, of course ;-). Our overall Lawson is only BN, HR, LP, PA, PR (I may have missed one) and I also support Lawson Security as well as Process Flow and a number of other non-Lawson applications. Other than that we have a part time SysAdmin (supports many other applications) and my teammate who is part time and mostly Kronos but also does our LBI reports and a number of Process Flows and is our EDI834 expert (she wrote our Benefit EDI834 interfaces). If anyone wants more detail I'd be glad to call you next week (I'm out of office today) if you want to post your name and phone number.

Wow. That's a lot of flows for just the HR suite. You must have automated
almost all functions within the dept. Nice.

On Fri, Aug 10, 2012 at 5:53 AM, wrote:

> [image: LawsonGuru.com Logo] <https://www.lawsonguru.com/> Lawson
> ProcessFlow Forum Notification A message was posted to a thread you are
> tracking. *RE: Lawson Process Automation* Posted by: *BarbR*
> 08/10/2012 04:48 AM Over .75? That would just be one - me. I'm about
> 1.15 to 1.2 - salaried, of course ;-). Our overall Lawson is only BN, HR,
> LP, PA, PR (I may have missed one) and I also support Lawson Security as
> well as Process Flow and a number of other non-Lawson applications. Other
> than that we have a part time SysAdmin (supports many other applications)
> and my teammate who is part time and mostly Kronos but also does our LBI
> reports and a number of Process Flows and is our EDI834 expert (she wrote
> our Benefit EDI834 interfaces). If anyone wants more detail I'd be glad to
> call you next week (I'm out of office today) if you want to post your name
> and phone number.
> ------------------------------
>
> To view the complete thread and reply via your browser, please visit:
>
> https://www.lawsonguru.co...-process-automation/
>
> You were sent this email because you opted to receive email notifications
> when someone posted and/or responded to a message on this forum.
> To unsubscribe to this thread please visit your user profile page and
> change your subscription options.
>
> Thank you,
> LawsonGuru.com
>

I think process flow is one of lawson's best tools. We also have a rather large number off flows for integration, communication, auditing, and data maintenance.

I have not counted in some time but i would be bet we have hit the 100 mark.... (our most recent are integration and communication flows that manage information related to our HSA plan including information so bank accounts get setup and then funded. we are currently working on flows that export data for retirement plans and take csv files to load data to bn32 or pr14)

Love the tool for automating..... (can't wait until next year when we plan to move to LPA.)

Hi Barb,

Is there any performance measurement or monitoring of the processes in Process Flow?

Thanks!

Well, there is the client ProcessFlow Administrator, which gives you access to the work unit log, error log, and when necessary the capability of simulating an inbasket entry on a task to get a flow moving if the intended recipient is unable to do so (that's rare as most of our nodes timeout to either a reject or to an HR follow up task assignment). Overall the tools are pretty rudimentary, but I hear that the tools in LPA are improved so I'm looking forward to that. I have two things that I use now to keep on top of status. The first is a "verification" flow that executes most of the important nodes we use (FTP scripts, TX Adapter node, SQL query, Email, etc.) which I have scheduled to run twice a day and it's purpose is only to let me know if there are any problems (it's very rare, but sometimes the FTP server needs to be restarted, sometimes the RMI service goes down, sometimes the database is hung and the queries won't run, etc., and this gives me a heads up). The second flow sends me an early morning email that lists the flows in progress (lets me see if any are waiting too long for a task response) and flows that have failed (another heads up on trouble). That's about it, mostly the flows just chug along without issue.

Hi,

Thanks a lot for your detailed answer.

I found a presentation about LPA, which looks very interesting:

http://www.infoteam.no/Fi...ction%2020120328.pdf

Hi,
I went through the above discussions. We had PFI and we used to use it extensively with our previous client. I too developed couple of flows with PFI and i got well acquainted with it. Sorry,I don't have much idea on PFA.
Is PFA only useful for M3 ? OR it can be used with S3 ?.
Sooner or later will PFI be replcaed by PFA ? I heard soon that Lawson will phase out PFI , but i am not very sure.
Are there any specific advantages with PFA when compared with PFI ?
Thnx
Vijay

LPA will replace PFI and it works with S3 and Landmark products. Once you upgrade to Lawson/Infor 10, you have to use LPA. There are additional functionality with LPA (FTP, for example) but it is pretty much the same. The Adminstration forms are accessed via the Rich Client and are better developed (tabs instead of seperate forms).

One more interesting article on Process Automation. Got the same from Lawson. Refer Attachment

The documentation for "Lawson Process Automation Admin Guide v10.0.2.0" published on August 2012 is available for download at:
http://www.inforxtreme.co...PAAG_10.0.2.0_UW.pdf
As mentioned earlier in this post, LPA can be used on LSF v9.0.1.9 or higher.

Here is a link to FAQs for the Lawson Process Automation/LPA and Lawson Process Integration/LPI products:

http://blogs.infor.com/fi..._faqs_06222012-1.pdf