In ContactsLaw, an activity contains a discrete set of steps, which forms the static workflow for that activity. All activities must have at least one step.

Depending upon the type of activity, it may be capable of exhibiting different states of behaviour. For example, trust payments support a 3-step request-authorise-process workflow and, in doing so, will behave differently at each step. You tell the activity system which step should exhibit each behaviour by setting the 'action' property. (See also: List of supported workflow behaviours)

 

Additionally, some actions occur within the activity system itself, beyond the scope of the particular activity. In this way, you can extend the functionality of built-in activities by adding steps that navigate to websites, create tasks, etc.

 

Finally, some activities do not provide a screen or capture form in which to interact with, or you may not wish to invoke this for a particular step. In this case, you can make a step that consists of a journal or fixed charge only; typically this models situations where activities are completed outside of the system, such as opening mail or performing paper filing.

Steps in a workflow may be marked as optional, meaning that members with sufficient authority will be able to skip over them. This makes it easy to create activities that adapt to staff hierarchies. For example, the 'request' step on many activities can be skipped by partners in the practice, since they would not need to seek authority from themselves.

 

You have the option to attach a journal (timer), a fixed charge or both to each step in a workflow. This allows you to have granular control over which parts of the activity are billable and the technique that is most applicable to record the charge.

 

To model situations where a successive step in a workflow must be completed by a particular member, you can configure that step to automatically suggest this member. This is useful in situations where the subordinate members complete the initial work and pass responsibility to file managers/supervisors.

The extensive permissions system in ContactsLaw allows you control to the finest degree, including being able to restrict individual steps of an activity to certain members/groups. This feature is made considerably more powerful through the concept of supervision and collaboration, which allows permissions to be used to both restrict access and to indicate responsibility.