"Creating a Voting Activity (Oracle Workflow Developer's Guide)

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


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Creating a Voting Activity

1. Create a voting lookup type that contains the responses you want to tally in your voting activity. See: To Create Lookup Types.

2. Create a voting message that prompts a recipient to respond with one of the values in the voting lookup type. Complete the Result tab for the message. Set the lookup type in the Result tab to the voting lookup type defined in Step 1. See: To Create a Message

3. Select the item type that you want to create a voting activity for in the navigator tree, then choose New Notification from the Edit menu.

4. Specify an Internal Name (all uppercase and no leading/trailing spaces) and a Display Name. Use the description to provide an explanation about this voting 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, Oracle Workflow Administrator's Guide.

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

5. The Result Type field must contain the lookup type that lists the responses that you want the voting activity to tally. This is the voting lookup type defined in Step 1.

6. Choose an icon that identifies your voting activity.

7. In the Message field, select the name of the voting message you created in Step 2. The voting message prompts the recipient for a response. The response choices are one of the predefined values specified in your voting lookup type.

8. Check Expand Roles so that the Workflow Engine polls for responses from the multiple users in the role rather than just from the first user in the role that replies. See: Notification Activity.

9. In the Function field, specify a function that tallies the responses from users. You can use the PL/SQL procedure WF_STANDARD.VOTEFORRESULTTYPE that the Standard Vote Yes/No activity calls. WF_STANDARD.VOTEFORRESULTTYPE is a generic tallying function. The Result Type that you specify for the voting activity defines the possible responses for the function to tally. The activity attributes that you define for the voting activity determine how the function tallies the responses. See: Vote Yes/No Activity.

Alternatively, you can specify your own custom tallying function, but you should make sure it conforms to the standard API for function activities. Specify the procedure using the format: <package_name>.<procedure_name>. See: Standard API for PL/SQL Procedures Called by Function Activities.

10. Choose Apply to save your changes.

11. Select the Details tab to display and modify the Details property page of the activity. See: To Define Optional Activity Details.

12. 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.)

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

14. If you use the WF_STANDARD.VOTEFORRESULTTYPE tallying function, create a custom activity attribute of type Number for each possible voting response. Remember that each possible voting response is a lookup code associated with the voting activity's result type. Hence, when you define your custom activity attribute, the internal name of the activity attribute must match the internal name of the lookup code, that is, the response value.

The value of the activity attribute can either be blank or a number that represents the percentage of votes required for a particular result. If you provide a percentage, then the result is matched if the actual tallied percentage for that response is greater than your specified percentage. If you leave an activity attribute value blank, then the Workflow Engine treats the response for that activity attribute as a default. In other words, if no particular percentage is satisfied after the votes are tallied, then the response that received the highest number of votes among those associated with a blank activity attribute becomes the result.

Note: If the tallied votes do not satisfy any response percentages and there are no default responses (blank activity attributes) specified, the result is #NOMATCH. If a <No Match> transition from the voting activity exists, then the Workflow Engine takes this transition, otherwise, it takes the <Default> transition. If no <Default> transition exists, it raises an error that no transition for the result is available (ERROR:#NOTRANSITION).

Note: If the tallied votes satisfy more than one response percentage or if no response percentage is satisfied, but a tie occurs among the default responses, the result is #TIE. If a <Tie> transition from the voting activity exists, then the Workflow Engine takes this transition, otherwise, it takes the <Default> transition. If no <Default> transition exists, it raises an error that no transition for the result is available (ERROR:#NOTRANSITION).

15. If you use the WF_STANDARD.VOTEFORRESULTTYPE tallying function, then in addition to defining your set of custom activity attributes, you must also define an activity attribute called Voting Option, whose internal name must be VOTING_OPTION. You can also copy the Voting Option activity attribute from the Vote Yes/No standard activity.

The Voting Option activity attribute specifies how the votes are tallied. The possible values are:

"Wait for All Votes"--the Workflow Engine waits until all votes are cast before tallying the results as a percentage of all the users notified. If a timeout condition occurs, the Workflow Engine calculates the resulting votes as a percentage of the total votes cast before the timeout occurred.

"Tally on Every Vote"--the Workflow Engine keeps a running tally of the cumulative responses as a percentage of all the users notified. If a timeout condition occurs, then the responses are tallied as a percentage of the total number of votes cast. Note that this option is meaningless if any of the custom response activity attributes have a blank value.

"Require All Votes"--the Workflow Engine evaluates the responses as a percentage of all users notified only after all votes are cast. If a timeout condition occurs, the Workflow Engine progresses along the standard timeout transition, or if none is available, raises an error, and does not tally any votes.

Creating a Voting Activity

See Also