Workflow in Our Recruiting App

Now that we've oriented ourselves to the different components involved with workflow, see how we can use workflow to help us build out the requirements that we talked about in About the Sample Recruiting App. Then we'll spend time implementing the rules that we come up with here.

We've already talked about one instance where workflow will give us a big advantage: automatically assigning a task to a recruiter when the status of a job application record changes to Reject or Extend an Offer. This will be a great start, but what else can we do?

If we look back at our last chapter on security and sharing, recall that we wanted to grant both recruiters and hiring managers permission to create new positions, but that ultimately we always wanted a recruiter to own those records because filling them is the recruiter's job responsibility. We hinted in the security and sharing chapter that we could accomplish this with workflow, and indeed we can! We'll simply need to use a workflow field update to change the record owner of a position record to a recruiter if it was originally created by a hiring manager. To prevent a single recruiter from getting overloaded with all these additional positions, we'll also use another platform feature, queues, to divvy up the orphaned position records fairly. We'll place the record in a queue of other position records without owners, and then let individual recruiters claim the positions they want.

Let’s also think about how position availability is advertised throughout Universal Containers. Like many organizations, Universal Containers prefers to fill positions with employee referrals, but employees often aren't aware of which positions are currently open. We can use a workflow alert to automatically send email to every employee whenever a new position opens up. This way employees learn about positions as they become available and can immediately think of friends and family members who might be interested.

Now let's get started!