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Passing a Process Property In and Out of Workflow Steps

In long-running, interactive, and service workflow processes, when a hierarchical process property is passed to a step in a workflow process, the Type argument field of the top level process property is overwritten by Workflow for the duration of the call to match the name of the argument as specified by the input argument's configuration.

For example, assume MyTree is a process property with data type Hierarchy. MyBusSvc is a business service that has a hierarchical Input Argument named SomeTree. Consider the process property described in Table 16.

If the input argument is configured with values displayed in Table 16, then the call into MyBusSvc receives a child in its input process property with the Process Property Type field set to SomeTree , instead of MyTree:

The rest of the data in the child process property is the same as the contents of the process property MyTree.

Similarly, Workflow expects an output argument of a step in a workflow that passes out a hierarchy to send it out as a child of the output property set. Workflow locates the child by examining the Type argument field of the child.

The string in the Type argument field must match the Output Argument name as specified in the output argument applet of the step. Once Workflow finds such a child, the data is copied into the indicated destination process property. However, the Type argument field on the incoming hierarchy is discarded and instead the name of the process property overwrites the Type argument field.

To summarize, when passing hierarchies into and out of steps, the Type argument field of the top level of the data is used as the name of the argument.

NOTE:  It is recommended the Type argument field of the top level of a hierarchical argument not contain data.