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Feature Request FR-2841
Product Area Developer Experience
Status ROADMAP

16 Voters

Approval Flow - Document Management Ideas

prusty.pradosh Public · Nov 14 2022

Idea Summary
As Oracle Approval Flow is now available in Oracle APEX 22 release , would like to see following features available.

1. Give option to either to store documents inside Oracle Database as BLOB (not ideal) , or store in Oracle Storage Cloud (Should be a configurable option) or Provide an option to store documents in Oracle Content Management System

2. In Oracle Process Cloud , the attachments are stored locally in PCS and also option to store them in Content Management System. But in PCS, any authenticated user who is part of the approval workflow (Requester, Reviewer,Approver , Admin etc) can see the documents at any point of time (even though task is not assigned to them). This is primarily does not meet the security and compliance requirement for lots of customers. 

Need a way either through configuration or condition based (same like other available conditions options for APEX Items/regions) where it can be controlled , who can upload/download/view version of the documents and at what point (example: when assigned to them or at any stage of approval etc)

3. Need a version management (configurable ..either at the process level or application level) , if document versions are required or not.

4. A configurable Purge frequency and No of days to keep the documents ( A Oracle Storage cloud concept to move them to archive to fetch latter)

5. Out of the box support for Oracle Storage Cloud GET/POST/DELETE/LIST/ZIP/UNZIP documents/folders,  (Not through DBMS_CLOUD package) , but instead a UI driven option.

6. Provide options for Digital signatures in documents (nice to have)

7. Email capability when Document property changes (like new version created , document deleted etc)

8. Capability to start a APEX Workflow process - when a new Folder is created, Document is uploaded or new version of document is updated etc.

Use Case
1. To meet the Security and Compliance around documents 

2. Providing capability to developers to programmatically control the access to documents (use cases mostly to Banking and Financial organization, HR Management systems where documents regarding Salary Raise, Disciplinary Action against employees where data is too sensitive , Disciplinary Committee approval process etc.)  

Preferred Solution (Optional)
Would leverage the Oracle Storage Cloud as a primary document management store. Use Oracle Events/Notification services. Use the native OCI Object storage API's to build the solution. Build custom UI's in APEX to meet this. Leverage some of the  native OCI capabilities.

This is currently on the roadmap for a future release of Oracle APEX.

Comments

Comments

  • ralf.mueller APEX Team OP 3.4 years ago

    Couple of comments here

    • A full APEX Process Automation solution is on our roadmap and will include Document Management capabilities, stay tuned on this one. We're considering various options here from storing the docs in a BLOB on APEX side (not ideal and we'd end up implementing Content Management features as part of APEX itself), storing the docs in OCI Object Storage (needs OCI infra for this, is not a real CMS) or using Oracle Content Management (https://www.oracle.com/uk/content-management/#rc30p5)
       
    • Some of the other features you ask for will be available as part of APEX Process Automation (like sending email, integration with Digital Signature services like DocuSign.com etc.) or are part of the underlying CMS.
       
    • The integration of APEX Process Automation and Document Management will be centered around starting a new Process when a document/folder was created and using Document Management for Process Attachments.
       
    • We don't see ourselves implementing low-level Document Management and Lifecycle features though that go beyond the requirements of our Process Automation roadmap.

    I'd be interested to learn more about specific requirements you might have in this area. Feel free to contact me at ralf.mueller@oracle.com

  • jayson hanes Admin OP 3.4 years ago

    I'm setting this as ROADMAP as much of the idea indeed is, but as Ralf essentially stated, some of it isn't (it's a long list of separate features really). Please do keep the conversation going!

  • prusty.pradosh OP 3.4 years ago

    Thanks Ralf and Jayson !! 

    Yes agreed that some of the document features are purely look like a complete document management system (Oracle Content Management). As long as APEX is also able to support some of the features currently supported by Oracle Process Cloud service (PCS) , we can have more adoption of APEX for Process flow. Currently , as we see document management is not part of the APEX Process Flow , we are bit hesitant to propose as one stop solution for UI , Process flow . We have developed some of these document managements using custom PL/SQL coding and integrating with Storage Cloud. 

    So would like to see many of these functionalities out of the box to make APEX more productive and capable. 

    Will add more ideas on this , when we see common set of requirements from the customers.

    By the way , can you clarify what is the direction from APEX team on this.

    Flow for APEX (The free Workflow component built by the MT-AG team ) , we should leverage for the Process flow in APEX 

    OR

    The Task and Unified Task List components available in APEX.

    Will there be visual designer component like Flow for APEX inbuilt into the APEX product in future , so that we can use that ?

    Will there be support or merge latter if we start using the Flow for APEX now?

    Thanks

    Pradosh