STAEDEAN Lifecycle Studio documentation

Lifecycle Studio Setup

STAEDEAN Lifecycle Studio can be used as the driver for Business Central Workflows. The STAEDEAN Lifecycle Studio is a common extension added as a framework type solution and can be further completed in the various products. Where workflows are designed to complete a specific task, mostly around approvals, Lifecycle Studio is more versatile as it:

• Manages the Life of a record with a status code.
• Tracks the status changes of that record and shows the history of when the status was changed and who changed it.
• Assists the user in business processes through pre-defined sets of state transitions The Business Central Workflows are also referred to as Sequential Workflows whereas Lifecycle Studio represent the State Machine type of workflow. When integrated they represent a powerful combination as they automate the process of requesting an approval by starting a workflow and when the workflow responds the state of the Lifecycle is changed based on the response.

The Business Central workflow is usually started with a Send Approval Request from the ribbon (for example in the Sales Order document). This same action is available as an Action Handler in Lifecycle Studio: SendDocForApproval.
When a Lifecycle, containing this action handler, is Released an event is started in the Business Central Workflow, for example for Items: "Approval of an item is requested". This Event is then the starting point for the workflow.
The Lifecycle Studio states have an additional setting: Approval State, with that option a state can be marked as either Approved or Rejected. Workflows can put Restrictions on records, in the specific functionality is specified what is restricted on that record. For Lifecycle Studio it means that a record cannot be moved to specific states as long as the record is restricted. This means the states marked as Approved or Rejected should also have a Condition where an expression checks if that record is restricted, when true the user is not allowed to select that state. The Lifecycle terminology is explained as follows: