Processes that keep pace with the market: fast changes in CONTMAN Workflow

Customers expect faster decisions. A regulator adds a new obligation. The board raises an approval threshold, and the department that used to approve contracts takes on new duties. Every one of these changes lands in your company's processes. When processes are written into code, changing them becomes an IT project: a request, a queue, a rollout. In the meantime people find their own way round it, by e-mail or in a spreadsheet, next to the system.

In CONTMAN Workflow a process is a definition your company changes itself. A new version of a workflow applies from the moment it is published, including to cases that are already under way. Here is how it works, and why it lets your company respond to the market without waiting.

A workflow is configuration, not code

In CONTMAN, a workflow is the agreed path for documents of one category: who decides, in what order and by when. You lay it out in the definition editor, as a list of steps or as a diagram. Decisions and conditions set the transitions between steps, including a way back to earlier ones. You do not need a programmer for any of it.

The building blocks match the way your company thinks about the process:

• Who decides. A named person, a role (the task then goes to the team's queue), a person named during the process, the person who started it, or someone outside your organisation.
• On what basis. A branch routes the case by conditions, such as an amount taken from one of the document's fields.
• By when. A step's deadline in working days, counted by your company's work calendar, or in calendar days.
• With which data. A task form of up to 32 fields, including fields required for a chosen decision.
• What happens by itself. Automatic steps send notifications, create documents from Word templates, fill in the document's data, apply the company seal and exchange data with your company's systems.

Typical changes and how you make them

The market rarely asks you to build a process from scratch. Usually one element changes:

• A new amount threshold. The board wants to approve contracts from PLN 100,000 instead of PLN 50,000. You change the branch's condition.
• An extra check. A new requirement calls for a compliance review before signing. You add an approval step assigned to a role, "Compliance" for example.
• New information on the document. A customer or a regulation requires a new piece of data in the contract. You add a field to the document category, even when the category already holds documents. The workflow then takes its value into the process or asks for it in the task form.
• A new document template. The legal team updates the contract template. You replace the Word template's content in the template register without changing its name.
• A new business partner. A partner has to fill in a form in the process but has no CONTMAN account. A step for someone outside your organisation sends them a link with an expiry date.
• Data from another system. A decision depends on an answer from one of your company's systems. An automatic step calls a service your administrator has made available, and a branch routes the process by the result.
• A change in the team. A task assigned to a role goes to a queue that everyone with that role can see. When someone joins or leaves the team, the role assignment changes and the workflow stays as it is.
• A variant for a new product. You duplicate an existing workflow as a new definition: you get a draft with a copy of its steps and change only what needs to work differently.

A new version applies at once, including to cases under way

Changing a process only matters if the change applies where the cases actually are. In CONTMAN Workflow it works like this:

1. You work on a draft version. The published version of the workflow keeps running while you prepare the next one.
2. You check it. A validity check lists the issues that block publishing and the warnings that do not.
3. You see the effect before you publish. If the new version removes a step or changes its type while cases are waiting on that step, CONTMAN shows those steps with the number of processes. You publish only after confirming.
4. You publish. Running processes move to the new version as soon as it is published. Their open tasks are replaced by new ones created under the new version, and anyone who opens an old task is shown where the work continues. The previous version is retired.

Steps that have already started finish under the version they began in: signatures in progress, calls to external systems and tasks with people outside your organisation. The case moves to the new version once such a step is complete. That way nobody collects signatures against two different signer lists at once.

If a process cannot be moved, for instance because its step no longer exists in the new version, it stays on the previous version. It appears in the list together with the reason, and waits either for a version that restores the step or for cancellation.

What does this mean for your company? A new rule applies to every case from the day you adopt it. No contract spends months running under rules your company no longer follows, and nobody waits for the old workflow to empty.

Fast, and under control

Moving fast does not have to mean losing control:

• The person responsible for a process changes it. Permission to edit a workflow's definition can be granted for that single workflow. Whoever owns purchasing changes the purchasing workflow and leaves the others alone. Designing all workflows is a separate permission.
• Every decision leaves a trace. For every decision, the process history records the person, the time, the comment and the file version, and that history cannot be changed. Every task also records the workflow version it was created in.
• The full version history. One export gives you the history of every version of a workflow and of its processes.
• A decision concerns the content you see. Each process is tied to a specific version of the file, so nobody approves content other than what they were shown.

A change in one sentence

You can also prepare a new version of a workflow in a conversation with an AI assistant connected to CONTMAN over MCP. Just write, for example: "In the contracts workflow, add a budget check for contracts over PLN 100,000." The assistant creates a new draft version and makes the change within your permissions. We explain how in Designing document workflows with an AI assistant.

Where to start

1. Pick the process that changes most often in your company, such as the approval of cost invoices or supplier contracts.
2. List what changed in it over the past year: thresholds, people, documents, deadlines.
3. Check which of those changes are a workflow setting in CONTMAN Workflow rather than a job for IT.

Would you like to see how a new rule from your own company reaches the cases already under way? Book a demo and we will show you with your own example.