AIBU to ask if someone can translate this word salad into English?

And that’s a workflow.

I’m currently implementing a workflow to speed up invites for cancer screening.

It can be interesting and rewarding.

I read that as “what does salad mean in English” /“what’s salad in England” and thought it’d be usual MN nonsense of some kind “who’s buying all the lettuce” etc

In my case, my boss sorts out the booking of people in using Numbers. I invoice her and make my invoices in Sheets. That’s it. No other screens required for my job. She uses Xero but I do not.

Do you have software for patient management to schedule appts, send emails with appointment reminders, keep records of treatments, create digital forms for patient registration etc in the dental clinic? That would be workflow management.

Workflow management software is just that… software that helps to standardise or streamline multiple business processes and how anything moves from one step to the next.

And that, of course, is why the NHS, Post Office and myriad other important institutions work so well ^^

Businesses or services exist to meet the wants and needs of customers.

Workflow management systems can be software systems or not… in any case they are the systems that standardise all the steps between the inputs to, and outputs from, the organisation. So if you work in an organisation that orders stuff, spends money, deals with customers or patients, takes payments, creates records, uses market data… then you work in an organisation that manages workflow.

Workflow management software is just that… software that helps to standardise or streamline multiple business processes and how anything moves from one step to the next.

I THINK that this astronomer business has software that helps workflow management systems get off the ground… for example by transferring data and processes across from existing systems, and dealing with any gaps or overlaps.

How do your patients get booked in, or your invoices issued? Your supplies ordered? That’s all part of the practice workflow, even if a receptionist is inputting the information you are still using the workflow management software to do your job.

Lots of people use workflow management software to some extent, without staring at it all day. One of the main reasons the software exists is to automate tedious parts of a job that, once upon a time, would have involved manual paperwork.

I interact with workflow management software most days, but its not "my job", its a tool.

The post you're responding to was a bit bristly, but I think that was a response to the OP's "I don't understand these words so they must be nonsense".

A private company that creates software to help businesses manage workflows.

🤣

I'm a reasonably intelligent professional, but the vast majority of the explanations on this thread are more complex than the quote in the OP.

Well done and thank you to @EarthwormJem and @IWantAMassiveEasterEgg for explaining it without a whole load of other jargon!

I’m not sure you’re quite right.

I suspect it’s leveraging the synergistic benefits of combining network effects with targeted data-driven solutions for top-down, distributed and clustered multi-node optimisation.

Or something.

It's rubbish and we should all boycott it

Yes, but for every employee staring at workflow management software there are a hundred others looking at works of art and sparkly diamonds. The poster seemed shocked that we’re not all au fait with the term, but for many it’s just a behind the scenes thing that IT deals with.

Thanks for this, GRex. I’m pleased I got that it was more than just developing ‘the’ workflow management software, at least!

If you're a judge or an auctioneer (as your name implies) then the courthouse or auction house very likely will, even if you personally don't.

So you don't have a booking system that plans your day? Your patients in and patients out are workflow.

So no one else read the OP as being a non-English speaker asking for a translation of ‘salad’.

Just me then, thinking ‘eh, salad is the translation’ and imagining tomatoes and lettuce.

I use ATMs regularly. It doesn't mean that I know how they work, or what their systems are called by the IT people who manage them.

So no, it wouldn't be pretty obvious to me what someone meant if they used their systems' technological title.

Having said that, I don't consider the highlighted text to be a word salad.

It sets up links between data in disparate systems to enable processes to access, use and add or edit that data, while auditing who did what. Usually you would have a DevOps team need to set up specific links, and middleware map the data; this tool gives more flexibility by automating a lot of that. Systems and even other workflow systems will still operate within each function, but this manages higher level sharing (within rules) across many systems. So simplistically- they create software, but that software helps you access other systems (or rather, the contextualised data within them).

Btw, this brings back memories of a job I had many years ago which involved assigning companies to codes and categories according to their activities. Anything tech-related was always a nightmare - often hard to tell if they were consulting, developing software themselves or something else, let alone what the tech was intended to do. I guess for them there is no be benefit to addressing laymen who will never be a client in a million years, but for me these companies were a real pain!

Not the environment’s though. Or humanity’s.

(How about that for a piece of late night po-faced MNerry at its finest?)

😃what an odd thing to assume. Thankful my job is considerably more interesting than workflow management!

Their software helps business implement, manage and use Apache Airflow.

Not all software "talks" to each other, so Astronaut's help bridge the gap between existing systems/software and Apache Airflow.

Just because you don’t understand something doesn’t make it ‘word salad’… 😳