Workflows

The workflow defines an ordered product's lifecycle and should be the first place you start when onboarding a new product. All actions defined in the workflow have to occur to move the product step by step, from the initial order request, through designing, manufacturing, and shipping to the customer. This will guide you through the process of managing and creating your workflows

1. Sign In

2. Workflows

Click the Workflows button from the left hand navigation menu

3. Workflow List

Here you will see any existing workflows in your organization. You can edit any existing workflow by clicking on the workflow name. To add a new workflow click the + button on the top right.

4. Design Engine Selection

Give your new workflow a name. Here you can choose a Design Engine Integration. Depending on the organization, you can have multiple different design engines to choose from. We'll select Toolkit3D's Shapeshift 3D Design Engine for this example.

5. Owner

You can choose the Organizational Owner of this workflow template. In most cases this will just have one option that would be your organization's name. For complex multi tenancy setups there can be multiple options to choose from. 

6. Design Engine Interaction

Each design engine can have manual or automatic interaction levels. By default, automatic will be selected and should not need any manual user interaction unless specifically called out by that particular design workflow.

7. MES Integration

Manufacturing Execution System relates to the order manufacturing lifecycle and how it is managed after design work has been completed. Depending on your integration options there could be one to many options to choose from. For now we'll choose the default Toolkit3D Factory App. The Owner is the manufacturer of the product.

8. Order Steps

This will generate the order operation statuses. The statuses are configured at a platform level and cannot be changed, however you can add as many or few options to map to them as you like in the list under each status. This can be helpful when mapping statuses from external MES integrations to your product's workflow.

9. Integrations

Factory Integrations can be added by clicking the + button

10. Integration Options - Nesting

3D printers can print objects of specific volume which depends on a particular printer. Within this available volume, it is possible to put multiple objects that are small enough to be printed in a single print job. The nesting system is responsible for assembling multiple printing objects into a single print job file which is limited to the target printer print volume.

11. Integration Options Start Status

12. Integration Options End Status

13. Save Workflow

Once all items are populated, click the save button to complete your new workflow.

14. Product View - Assigning a Workflow

When creating or editing a product a workflow must be selected. You can see all of your available workflows in the pull down menu in the product page. You can change a workflow for any product, the workflow will take effect on any future orders of that product.