Application Versus Workflow Log Revisited Due to TechEd Presentation

[Trant, David]

In a thread on the WUG dated September 8 - 12, 2005, and entitled
"Workflow Substitution Report," there was a good discussion that
included whether historical data such as who approved what is best
obtained form the workflow log or the application.  One of the comments
was:

The application is the only reliable source for auditable information,
not workflow.  Workflow logs are transitory and not guaranteed to be the
source of the update.

There were other similar statements, and Jocelyn seemed to confirm this
notion.  A colleague of mine attended a presentation at TechEd Boston
entitled "BP1107 SAP Business Workflow - Harnessing the Power of Five
Questions."  Slide 18 of this presentation looks something like:

Do What - As Little as Possible
  Let the Decision Makers be just that
    Is it necessary for your key decision makers to actually effect
their decision?
    Once the decision has been made, let the system do the work for you!
  Automate Your Processes
    The Workflow environment offers a background (system) user to
perform actions where all necessary decision have been made and the
necessary data is available
    This user is called WF-BATCH
  What about Change Tracking and Auditing?
    Once you rely on WF-BATCH to perform key actions, document headers
are no longer indicative of who was involved.
    Forget the header, look to the Log!

The last point on the slide seems to contradict the consensus from our
earlier e-mail string.  We are redesigning an existing custom workflow
on 4.6C that involves changing the status of a sales order to indicate
where we are in an approval process.  Today, the status object change
log indeed shows WF-BATCH as the user making all the changes.  Our
auditors would like to know who actually approved these changes, and
based on experience and the WUG e-mail thread, I'm reluctant to rely on
the log for this, even if it were easy to do so programmatically - and
it's not!  As much as I hate to create a custom table to store such
information, I'm starting to lean toward that solution.

Does anyone have additional thoughts as to whether we really should be
relying on the log for reporting, including auditing?  Given that we
archive completed workflows after 60 days due to performance needs, I'm
not sure how viable that would be for us.  Eventually, I envision this
type of information being sent to BW prior to archiving, but since we
don't have a BW solution for workflow objects right now, that isn't
viable for us either at the moment.  The only other option I see is to
force the user to make the changes directly in the application so their
userID is actually listed, but then that defeats the joy of having the
workflow execute the step for them in the background.

Any thoughts on the subject?

Thanks,
David
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This message is for the designated recipient only and may
contain privileged, proprietary, or otherwise private information.  
If you have received it in error, please notify the sender
immediately and delete the original.  Any unauthorized use of
this email is prohibited.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[mf2]