"To Define Nodes in a Process (Oracle Workflow Developer's Guide)

Oracle Workflow Developer's Guide
Release 2.6.3
Part Number B10284-02


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To Define Nodes in a Process

1. Open the Process window for your process activity.

2. To create a new function, notification, event, or process node, first select the New Function, New Notification, New Event, or New Process icon from the Process window toolbar. Next, click on the position within the Process window where you want to place this new node. The property page for the new node appears.

Note: You can also create a new node by dragging and dropping a predefined activity from the navigator tree into the process window. This automatically populates the node's property page with predefined information. Double-click on the node and skip to Step 5 to further edit its property page.

3. In the Item Type field, select the item type that you want this activity node to be associated with.

4. Choose one of the following methods to define the remaining information for the node.

Select either the internal name or display name of a predefined activity. Oracle Workflow Builder then populates all the fields with predefined information from the master activity as shown in the Navigator window.

Alternatively, choose the New button to define a new activity. To complete the following tabs of the property page, refer to the sections listed:

Process--To Create a Process Activity

Function--To Create a Function Activity

Notification--To Create a Notification Activity

Event--To Create an Event Activity

Details--To Define Optional Activity Details

Roles--The information in this tab is currently not supported.

Access--To Set the Access Level for an Object

Caution: Any changes that you make to the any of the above tabs automatically propagate to the master activity and affect all other instances of that activity. Only changes that you make to the Node and Node Attributes tabs, and to the Event Details tab for an event activity, are local and specific to the current node activity.

5. Select the Node tab to specify information that is specific to this node. Specify a Label for the node. Since an activity can be used more than once in any given process, the Label field lets you give a unique name to the instance of this particular activity in the process. By default, the label name is the activity name, but if the activity is used more than once in the process, -N is appended to the activity name, where N represents the 'Nth' instance of the activity in use.

Attention: When you call most Oracle Workflow APIs, you must pass the activity's label name and not its activity name. See: Workflow Engine APIs, Oracle Workflow API Reference.

6. Indicate if the current node is a start or end activity in your process, by choosing 'START' or 'End', respectively. 'NORMAL' is the default if it is neither. You may have multiple START and END nodes in your process.

A Start activity is marked (Start) and has a small green arrow in its activity icon, and an End activity is marked (End) and has a red arrow in its activity icon.

Attention: The Start/End field is always set to Normal by default for all activity nodes. Even if you use the Standard Start or Standard End activity, you must manually edit the Start/End field to be either Start or End, respectively.

7. For an END node, you must also select a value for the final process result if the overall process activity has a result type associated with it. The list of values for the final process result is derived from the lookup type specified as the process activity's result type.

8. You can provide a comment to yourself about this node.

9. For a notification that requires a response, a process activity that is a subprocess within another process, an event activity with an event action of Receive, or a blocking function activity, specify whether the activity must be completed by some specified time. If the activity is not completed by a given time, you can redirect the parent process to transition to a different activity. See: Timeout Transitions.

Choose 'No Timeout' if the activity does not have to be completed by a given time.

Choose 'Relative Time' if you want the activity to be completed by some constant relative time. You can enter any combination of days, hours and minutes to specify when the activity times out. The value you enter is interpreted as a relative offset from the begin date of the activity, in the unit of MINUTES. A relative timeout value of zero means no timeout.

Choose 'Item Attribute' if you want the activity to be completed by some relative time that is computed dynamically at runtime. Note that you must first create an item attribute of type number to store the computed timeout value and reference that predefined item attribute here. See: Item Type Attributes and To Define an Item Type or Activity Attribute.

Attention: The dynamic timeout value stored in this attribute is interpreted as a relative offset from the begin date of the activity, in the unit of MINUTES. A null timeout value or a value of zero means no timeout.

10. For a notification activity node, or for an event activity node with an event action of Send, you can override the priority assigned to the activity's message. Choose 'Default' to keep the default priority of the message.

Choose 'Constant' to override the default priority with the new specified priority level.

Choose 'Item Attribute' to override the default priority with a new priority level that is dynamically determined at runtime. Note that you must first create an item attribute of type number to store the computed priority value and reference that predefined item attribute here. See: Item Type Attributes and To Define an Item Type or Activity Attribute.

Note: The computed priority value can be any number between 1-99. Oracle Workflow automatically converts the number to a priority level as follows: 1-33 = High, 34-66=Normal, and 67-99=Low.

11. For a notification activity node, specify the performer of the activity. The performer is the role to whom the notification is sent. You may either select a constant role name or an item type attribute that dynamically determines the role at runtime. Note that you must first create an item attribute of type role to store the computed role name and reference that predefined item attribute here. See: Item Type Attributes, To Define an Item Type or Activity Attribute, and Roles.

Note: If you set the Performer Type to Constant and you are connected to the database and have loaded roles from the database, you can select a constant role name from the Performer poplist. If you are working in a .wft file data store without any open connection to the database, you can directly type in a valid role display name in the Performer field. When you upload the file to a database, the role will be resolved to the appropriate role data stored in the database based on the role display name you entered.

Note: When you assign a notification to a multi-user role, the Workflow Engine keeps track of the individual from that role that actually responds to the notification. See: Respond API, Oracle Workflow API Reference.

Note: Although Oracle Workflow Builder allows you to specify a performer for any type of node activity, Oracle Workflow only considers the value of Performer for notification activity nodes.

12. Choose Apply to save your changes, OK to save your changes and close the property page or Cancel to cancel your changes and close the property page.

When you save and close your property page, the activity node appears in the position you specified in the Process window. If this is a new activity you created, a corresponding master activity is also created under the appropriate branch in the navigator tree.

13. If the node is an event activity, you can specify additional required event information by choosing the Event Details tab. See: To Define Event Details for an Event Node.

14. If the node is a function, notification, or event activity and the activity has activity attributes, you can assign values to those activity attributes by choosing the Node Attributes tab. See: To Define Activity Attribute Values.

15. If the node is a process activity, then a small subprocess overlay icon appears over the upper right corner of process activity icon. The subprocess overlay icon identifies the node as a subprocess within the process diagram.

To Define Nodes in a Process

See Also