Using Activity Guides

Activity guides provide a hierarchical organization of dependent and sequential tasks. An activity guide lists the tasks, also referred to as steps, that you need to complete. Each task is linked to a specific local or remote transaction or external URL. Some activity guides may include a questionnaire that includes questions used to determine which steps or tasks will be included in the activity guide.

How the lists and navigations is presented on the page depends on whether you are accessing a classic activity guide or a Fluid activity guide.

  • Classic – As you use an activity guide, you see the lists of tasks that you need to complete in the pagelet area. When you click a task, the associated page appears in the target content area of the WorkCenter. To complete a task, complete the associated page, and save your work; the status of the task will update to complete. The activity guide pagelet remains visible as you move from step to step, with the current step highlighted, and you can see your progress by viewing the Task Progress bar, if included, that is located at the top of the activity guide pagelet. An icon appears next to each activity item to indicate its status.

    A navigation frame appears above the target content area, which includes buttons that enable you to navigate through each task. Next and Previous buttons are provided; additional buttons and controls may also appear, if defined by the Activity Guide developer, such as the Mark as Complete button that you see in some of the examples we provide below. Typically, these additional buttons enable you to mark a task as complete or cancel your actions.

  • Fluid — Tasks may be displayed either vertically or horizontally on the page depending on the activity guide template used by the developer to create the page.

    Guided activity guides include Next and Previous buttons for navigation in the activity guide subbanner. Non-guided activity guides do not include any default navigation buttons. Both types can include custom buttons in the activity guide subbanner.

Tasks can include the following characteristics:

  • Tasks can be required or optional.

    An asterisk designates a required task. For an activity guide status to be designated as complete, all required tasks must have a complete status.

  • Tasks can be organized hierarchically with a parent (summary) task composed of child (detail) tasks.

    All required child tasks must be complete before the parent task is considered complete.

    Note:

    Parent tasks are collapsible/expandable headings which groups related tasks; they do not load content in the target area when clicked.

  • Tasks can be date-dependent and include required start or completion dates.

  • Tasks can include dependencies; for example, one task can be set to be dependent on the status of another task.

  • Task access can be controlled by role. If you do not have permission to access a task, it will be disabled and you will not be able to access it.