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1. Select the item type that you want to create a notification for in the navigator tree, then choose New Notification from the Edit menu. Define your notification activity in the Activity property page that appears.

You can also select a message in the navigator tree and drag and drop the message into the Notifications branch of the same item type to create a notification activity that sends that message.

2. A notification activity must have an Internal Name (all uppercase and no leading/trailing spaces) and a Display Name, which is the translatable name that appears in your process diagram. Use the description to provide an explanation about this activity.

Attention: To update the internal name for an activity once it is defined, you must use a special SQL script called wfchact.sql. You should only use this script to correct errors in an activity's internal name during design time. Do not use this script to rename activities that are involved in running instances of processes. See: Wfchact.sql.

Caution: Do not include colons ":" or leading/trailing spaces in your internal name.

3. Indicate the result type (a predefined Lookup Type) for this activity. Result types list the possible results returned by this activity. Your workflow diagram may branch depending on the value returned by your completed activity. See: To Create Lookup Types.

You can choose <None> as the result type if your activity does not return a value, or if your workflow process does not depend on the value returned.

4. Select the name of the message you want this notification to send. See: To Create a Message.

5. If you plan to assign this notification to a role consisting of multiple users and you want to send an individual copy of this notification to each user in the role, then check Expand Roles. If you uncheck Expand Roles, then only one copy of the notification is delivered to the role as a whole. See: Notification Activity.

6. You can optionally specify a PL/SQL stored procedure in the Function field. The procedure is known as a post-notification function and lets you couple processing logic to the notification activity. The Workflow Engine executes this post-notification function in RESPOND, FORWARD, TRANSFER or TIMEOUT mode depending on whether the recipient responds to, forwards, or transfers the notification or whether the notification times out. When the Notification System completes execution of the post-notification function in RESPOND mode, the Workflow Engine then runs the post-notification function again in RUN mode. See: Standard API for PL/SQL Procedures Called by Function Activities and Post-Notification Functions.

If you check Expand Roles and you assign a message that has a special Result, to this notification activity, then use the Function field to specify the name of a custom PL/SQL stored procedure that tallies the responses you get back from each of the recipients of this notification. Specify the procedure using the format: <package_name>.<procedure_name>. See: Voting Activity.

7. Choose an icon that identifies your activity. You can use any icon, as long as the icon is stored in a .ico file, to symbolize the action of an activity. See: Adding Custom Icons to Oracle Workflow.

Choose Browse to view the icon files listed in the workflow icons subdirectory.

You can also drag and drop icon files from the Windows Explorer or File Manager onto an activity in your navigator tree to assign that icon to the activity.

8. Choose Apply to save your changes.

9. Select the Details tab to display and modify optional Details of the activity. See: To Define Optional Activity Details.

10. Select the Roles tab page to specify the roles that have access to this notification activity. (This functionality will be supported in a future release.)

11. Select the Access tab page to set the access levels allowed to modify this notification. See: Allowing Access to an Object.

12. Choose OK to save your changes and close the property pages.

13. The notification activity now appears beneath Notifications in the navigator tree. You can review or edit the properties of this activity at any time by double-clicking on the activity in the navigator tree or by selecting the activity and choosing Properties from the Edit menu or by pressing Enter on your keyboard.

See Also

To Copy an Activity