7.2 Adding Activities to a Workflow

  1. Click the Workflow tab. A graphical representation of the workflow for the provisioning request definition is displayed:

    Because every workflow must have a Start and Finish activity, these activities are added to the canvas automatically. The Start Activity is connected to the Finish Activity with a forward link.

  2. To add an activity to the workflow, click the icon for the desired activity in the palette and drag the icon onto the workspace.

    You can insert an activity between activities that are linked by a flow path by dropping the activity onto the flow path. For information about defining flow paths between activities, see Section 7.4, Adding the Flow Paths. After you have added an activity to the workflow, you should set the properties of the activity (see Section 7.2.1, Setting the General Properties of an Activity).

7.2.1 Setting the General Properties of an Activity

  1. Right-click the activity icon for which you want to set properties and select Show Properties from the menu.

    The Properties view is displayed:

  2. Click in the column for a property to set the property. For information about the properties for each activity, see Section 8.1, Configuring Activities.

7.2.2 Defining the Data Item Mappings

You use the Data Item Mapping view to map data from the data flow into fields in a form (pre-activity mapping), and from the form back to the data flow (post-activity mapping).

  1. Right-click the activity icon for which you want to set properties and select Show Data Item Mapping from the menu.

    The Data Item Mapping view is displayed:

  2. For pre-activity mapping, click in the Source Expression field for the item that you want to map, then specify an expression. For post-activity mapping, click in the Target Expression field for the item that you want to map, then specify an expression.

    Pre-activity maps can be used for:

    • Initializing form control values

    • Setting default values for form controls

    • Populating complex form controls with data lists derived from LDAP Queries

    • Passing data from form controls of a previous activity to a form control in the current activity

    • Calling external Java* classes to process data

    Post-activity maps can be used for:

    • Creating new data items in flowdata

    • Moving form control data from an activity into flowdata

    • Calling external Java* classes to process data

    For information about data item mapping, see Section 8.1, Configuring Activities.

    The Start Activity can have hard coded strings, system variables like process locale and recipient, and Identity Vault expressions (created using the ECMA expression builder VDX Expr Panel) in pre-activity maps.

    Leave the Source Expression blank in pre-activity maps for form fields that the user is expected to fill in. Alternatively, create a source expression to supply a default value for form fields that the user is expected to fill in. In either case the form field needs to be defined as editable. See Section 6.5.2, General Properties for information about setting the properties of form fields.

7.2.3 Defining the Email Notification Settings

You use the Email Notification view to select an e-mail template, and to specify expressions to provide values for named parameters included in the e-mail template. E-mails are sent when a new Approval activity starts (to notify the approver that they have work to do) and when the Finish activity completes (to notify the initiator that the workflow is done).

  1. Right-click the activity icon for which you want to set properties and select Show Email Notification from the menu.

    The Email Notification view is displayed:

  2. Click in the Email Template field, and select an e-mail template from the list of defined templates.

  3. Click in the Source field for a Target token and specify an ECMAScript expression that assigns a value to the token.

    See Section 8.1, Configuring Activities for information about e-mail notification settings).