7.12 Start Workflow Activity

The Start Workflow activity allows you to invoke a workflow instance from within a provisioning request definition. The workflows you invoke branch; they are not subflows.

You can group these related workflows by using the Correlation ID.

7.12.1 Properties

The Start Workflow activity has the following properties:

Table 7-22 Start Workflow Properties

Property

Description

Name

Provides a name for the activity.

Provisioning Request Defn to start

An expression that resolves to the distinguished name of the provisioning request definition to invoke. You can select the provisioning request from the expression builder. The possible selections are provisioning requests whose Status is Active and whose Process Type is Normal.

Recipient

An expression that resolves to one or more user or group distinguished names.

To specify multiple values, click Recipient List (in the ECMAScript Objects panel of the expression builder). This generates a pre-built function called multirecipient(). Replace ‘Enter recipient ‘ with the distinguished name of a user or group as needed to include all of the recipients for the workflow.

A separate workflow process is created for each recipient that you specify.

Correlation ID

An expression that lets you group the workflows invoked from this activity. If you do not supply a value, the workflow engine supplies a default, which is the request ID of the current workflow.

7.12.2 Data Item Mapping

To pass the data needed by the workflow you want to start, you must specify data item mappings. The data items you must specify depend on the workflow that is to be started. The Data Item Mapping view displays the fields required by the Provisioning Request Defn to start. Because the Provisioning Request Defn to start is an expression, it might evaluate properly only at runtime. This would be the case in a workflow where the user could choose a workflow to start from a form field, and that value gets mapped to flowdata, and that flowdata expression is used in the Provisioning Request Defn to start property. To account for this, the Data Item Mapping view changes based on whether the workflow to start can be determined at design time. If so, then the data items to start that workflow are shown. However, if the workflow is not known at design time, then the workflow developer must specify them.

The Start Workflow activity has the following data item mappings:

Table 7-23 Start Workflow Data Item Mapping Properties

Setting

Description

Source Expression

An expression used to initialize the data items needed by the Provisioning Request Defn to Start. When you click a cell in the Source Expression column, the ECMA expression builder displays to help you define your expression.

Target Form Field

A read-only field that specifies target fields for the initialization data specified in the Source Expression. If the workflow cannot be determined at design time, this field is editable.

Data Type

Specify the data type for this data item.

Multivalued

A read-only field that specifies if the workflow can accept multiple values for this parameter. If this value is true, you can specify multiple values by using the syntax provided in the expression builder. If the workflow cannot be determined at design time, this field is not present.

7.12.3 E-Mail Notification

Not supported with this activity.