Designing Activity Guides

This chapter provides an overview of activity guides and discusses how to:

• Create and define activities.

• Create activity guide pages.

• Set up access to pages.

Understanding Activity Guides

Activity guides are navigational aids for end users. An activity guide integrates a single map into the related transactional pages. Although activity guides can benefit all users, they are particularly appropriate for guiding untrained users through self-service transactions.

An activity guide appears as a navigation bar across the top of a page. The bar displays each step that is involved in the activity. Clicking a step takes you to the page where you can complete the step; the navigation bar remains visible as you move from page to page.

Understanding Activity Guide Creation

Creating an activity for an activity guide is similar to creating an activity for a workflow application. You create the new activity and add steps corresponding to the pages that make up the activity. You must, however, set a few extra options.

After you create an activity guide, modify the target pages for each step so that those pages display the activity guide.

The pages don’t show the activity guide when you use the standard PeopleSoft portal navigational structures. Therefore, your final task is to create a mechanism for users to access the activity.

Creating and Defining Activities

This section discusses how to:

• Create an activity.

• Define activity steps.

• Define activity guide options.

Creating an Activity

To create an activity:

1. Select File, New in PeopleSoft Application Designer.

   When prompted, select Activity. Save the activity.

2. Select the Use tab from the Activity Properties dialog box.

   To open the properties dialog box, double-click in the map (but not on an item in the map).

3. Select Activity Guide.

4. (Optional) Select Automatically sequence steps.

   After you add steps to an activity, you arrange the steps into a logical sequence using connecting arrows, and assign each step a number.

   If you select Automatically sequence steps, the step numbers (and the path numbers) are automatically assigned when you save. The step and path numbers are based on the order in which you draw the connecting arrows. This is an efficient way to order the steps.

5. Add steps corresponding to the pages that make up the activity.

6. Arrange the steps, using connectors to put the steps in order.

   To connect two steps:

   1. Click the Link button.

   2. Click the first step.

   3. Click the second step.

7. Repeat until all steps are connected.

   You have two options when you arrange the steps: sequential or parallel paths. In a sequential path, the steps form one unbroken sequence. When you create parallel paths, the steps appear in the activity guide as a single row, but the user has more flexibility in choosing which step to do. This is because the user can go directly to any step whose immediate predecessor has been finished.

Defining Step Attributes

Define step attributes on the Step Attributes dialog box.

To define step attributes:

1. Double-click a step, or right-click and select Item Properties.

   The Step Definition dialog box appears.

2. Enter a name and icon description.

3. Enter the step and path numbers for each step.

   If you’re manually ordering steps, enter a step and path for each step in the activity.

   If you’re automatically sequencing steps, the step and path number are automatically updated when you save the activity. However, even if you use this feature, check the step and path number after saving to verify that the steps are in the intended ordered.

4. Select Attributes.

   The Step Attributes dialog box appears.

5. Indicate that the step is processed by a page.

   Select Page in the Processed by group box of the dialog box. The External Program option is not supported for activity guides.

6. Provide directions for starting the page.

   Select the page from the list boxes in the Processing Page group box.

   In the Action list box, select the type of activity that the user must perform on the database. When a user selects this step, the system displays the specified page in the specified action mode.

7. Click OK to close the Step Attributes dialog box.

Defining Activity Guide Options

Define activity guide options on the Step Attributes dialog box.

To define activity guide options:

1. Select Activity Guide.

2. Configure activity guide options.

   Required Step is not currently used by activity guides. However, to create your own programs to enforce required steps, you can use this option to identify them.

   Select Can be worked multiple times to permit a user to return to an already-worked step. When this option is selected, the activity guide link that opens the step remains active, even after the step is worked. When this option is cleared, the link is unavailable after the user finishes the step.

   The button display determines what users see as they use the activity guide.

   Link	Select to represent each step with the text that you used as the icon description. This text becomes a link to take the user to the page that is represented by the step.
   Graphic	Select to represent each step with an icon. The icons are not links, so if you select this option, the user cannot use the activity guide to navigate between pages. Instead, the user must rely on the Back and Next buttons that appear in related pages. Use this option if you want the Back and Next buttons to be the only navigation objects in the activity guide.
   Both	Select to display both icons and links. This is the default option.

3. (Optional) Add graphics to represent the possible statuses of the step.

   If you display graphics in activity guides, you must specify which graphics to use. Specify four graphics: one for each possible step status. You can use the same graphic for multiple statuses.

   Enabled Graphic	Use for the next step after the step that is currently in process. If you’ve defined parallel paths, multiple steps can be enabled simultaneously. If you’ve enabled both graphics and links, the accompanying link is active.
   Disabled Graphic	Use for steps that the user cannot yet start. If you’ve enabled both graphics and links, the accompanying link is inactive.
   Worked Graphic	Use for steps that the user has completed. If you’ve enabled both graphics and links, the accompanying link is inactive, unless you marked the step as one that can be worked multiple times.
   Processing Graphic	Use for steps on which the user is currently working. If you’ve enabled both graphics and links, the accompanying link is inactive.

   You can select any graphic in the PeopleSoft image catalog. To use a custom graphic, you must first add it to the catalog.

4. Repeat for each step in the activity.

5. Save the activity guide.

Creating Activity Guide Pages

This section provides an overview of activity guide pages and discusses how to create activity guide pages.

Understanding Activity Guide Pages

The pages that are accessible through activity guides are standard PeopleSoft pages. However, for the page to appear in an activity guide, it needs two elements that aren’t otherwise present:

• Across the top, a bar displays an overview of all the steps in the activity. In addition to providing information about the activity, this bar provides navigational links to take the user to the pages that are associated with each step.

• Back and Next buttons appear in the main transaction area. These buttons provide an alternate means of navigating from step to step.

Note. Even after you’ve added the two activity guide elements to a page, you can continue to keep that page accessible through the regular PeopleSoft menu structure. The activity guide elements aren’t visible when the page is accessed that way.

These modifications are visible only when you access the page in activity mode. If you use the PeopleSoft portal navigation, the activity guide modifications are invisible. This enables you to use the same pages in activity guides as you do throughout your PeopleSoft system.

Creating Activity Guide Pages

To add an activity guide to a page:

1. Open the page in PeopleSoft Application Designer.

2. Add the ACTIVITY_GUIDE_SBP subpage to the page.

   The PeopleSoft convention is to place the ACTIVITY_GUIDE_SBP subpage across the top of the page.

3. Add the ACTIVITY_NEXT_SBP where you want the Back and Next buttons to appear.

   The PeopleSoft convention is to place the ACTIVITY_NEXT_SBP subpage in the lower, right-hand corner of the page.

4. Save the page.

   The two subpages that you’ve added appear only when a user navigates to the page in activity guide mode. If you navigate to the page in regular page mode, these sections are hidden, and the page looks like it did before the activity guide subpages were added to the page.

Setting Up Access to Pages

This section provides an overview of activity guide page access, activity guide mode, and step status, and discusses how to:

• Access activity guides through worklists.

• Access activity guides through custom links.

Understanding Activity Guide Page Access

The pages that are accessible through activity guides are standard PeopleSoft pages that you access through the PeopleSoft portal. If you access the pages in a special activity guide mode, you see the activity guide functionality. If you access the pages using standard PeopleSoft menu navigation, the activity guide functionality is invisible. This means that you can use the same pages in both the standard navigation and activity guides.

Understanding Activity Guide Mode

The page itself is viewable in activity mode or in regular page mode. For a user to access an activity guide, the link that takes the user there must be specially constructed. So, the last task that you must perform when developing activity guides is setting up that access, either by creating a worklist item or by constructing a custom link.

Understanding Step Status

As you proceed through the steps, the icons and text in the activity guide change to indicate the status of the step. Depending on how the activity is defined, up to four different statuses are possible, each with its own icon.

Accessing Activity Guides Through Worklists

Worklist links are generated when a transaction triggers a workflow event that sends a routing to the worklist. The workflow event is part of a business process and activity that were defined when the workflow application was built.

In worklist links, the &ActName value is the name of the workflow activity where the event is triggered, not the name of the activity guide that works the item. However, when resolving a worklist link (identifiable because the ICType=Worklist), PeopleSoft determines the name of the activity that works the event and, if that event is an activity guide, puts the page in activity guide mode.

Notice that you can direct users to activity guides from their worklists. To do this, build a workflow application with a page on which the user initiates the workflow event. The user then receives a routing, either in a worklist or by email, with a link that takes the user to the activity guide.

For example, you can create a page on which users update marital status. This page isn’t part of an activity guide; it’s a regular PeopleSoft page accessible through regular portal navigation. Behind the page, you create a workflow application that is worked by the Marriage activity. If the Marriage activity is marked as an activity guide, the workflow link that takes users to this activity enables users to see the page in activity guide mode.

The advantage of using workflow to access activity guides is that the necessary link is automatically created by standard workflow processing. You don’t need to create the link manually or understand the syntax of the link.

The disadvantage to using workflow to access activity guides is that, from your users’ perspectives, there are two separate transactions involved: the one that triggers the workflow routing and, after the user has received the routing, the one that works the item.

Accessing Activity Guides Through Custom Links

If you don’t want to use a workflow application to provide access to an activity guide, you must provide users with custom navigation that enables them to reach the page in activity guide mode.

The advantage of using custom navigation is that users can complete all of the steps in one session. They don’t have to go from the PeopleSoft system to a workflow notification and back to the PeopleSoft system.

The disadvantage of using a custom link is that you can’t rely on PeopleSoft to create the link for you; you must understand the proper link syntax and manually code the link in PeopleCode.

The following procedure outlines one approach to creating custom links.

To transfer a user to an activity guide:

1. Set up a component with a single blank page.

   This page acts as a transfer point only; users accessing the page are automatically transferred elsewhere without ever seeing the blank page.

2. Add the component to a portal registry.

3. Transfer the user from the blank page to the activity guide.