Understanding Activity Guide Templates and Template Types

Activity guide templates provide a mechanism for defining the properties, security, action items, contextual data, and other options for activity guides once. Then, individual activity guide instances can be generated from these reusable templates. Once an activity guide has been instantiated from a template, the instance cannot be associated with a different template. In addition, while the activity guide template can be modified, any active or inactive instances already generated from that template will not be altered by the modifications.

Typically, activity guide properties, security, advanced options, and other attributes are created and maintained at the activity guide template level only. However, you can also maintain these attributes within activity guide instances; the same pages with the same fields are used in both cases. While the examples in this section illustrate creating and maintaining these attributes within an activity guide template, these examples could apply equally to activity guide instances.

Terminology

The following terms are used to differentiate the types of activity guides that can be created, and the types of processes these activity guides support:

Term Definition

Optimized

Optimized activity guides support only activity guide-optimized fluid components as well as classic components. This allows an optimized activity guide to control the use and display of the left panel.

Non-optimized activity guides support any fluid components that adhere to the guidelines noted previously as well as classic components. Instead of presenting the action items in the left panel, a non-optimized activity guide presents a vertical drop-down list in the fluid banner (or header) or uses an activity guide pagelet for classic activity guides.

Activity guide-optimized fluid components

An activity guide-optimized fluid component adheres to the guidelines for all fluid components as well as the additional guidelines for optimized activity guide types.

Sequential

In a sequential activity guide, action items are numbered and must be completed in the specified order. With non-sequential activity guides, action items are not numbered and can be completed in any order unless dependencies are defined.

Note: Auto-save is enabled for sequential activity guides automatically. However, each fluid component used on a step should implement a standard PeopleTools save processing mechanism—for example, a Save button with the toolbar action set to Save on the page field properties.

Guided

Guided activity guides include Next and Previous in the activity guide subbanner. Non-guided activity guides do not include any navigation buttons; in addition, non-guided activity guides display the standard fluid banner.

Activity guide subbanner

The activity guide subbanner displays Next and Previous navigation buttons, as well as any custom action buttons defined for the activity guide.

Simple

Simple activity guides support a simple hierarchy with only one level of action items. Otherwise, activity guides can support up to two levels of action items: summary and detail.

Single unit of work (SUOW)

Certain activity guide types can be defined as a single unit of work spanning multiple components in the same system. No data is committed until a submit is performed at the final step; if the user exits the activity guide before the submit, all changes are rolled back. All SUOW activity guides are sequential; moreover, data dependencies can be configured between action items using input/output parameters.

Single component

Certain activity guide types can be defined as single component, which allows different pages from the same component to be displayed as separate steps within the activity guide. Similar to a SUOW activity guide, no data is committed until a submit is performed at the final step; if the user exits the activity guide before the submit, all changes are lost. However, unlike a SUOW activity guide, a Save button can be configured to perform a save at any step.

Note the following differences between single unit of work and single component activity guides along with important limitations:

Single Unit of Work Single Component

Each action item (step) is a separate component.

Each action item (step) is a page from the same component.

Supported only in optimized guided sequential activity guide types.

Important: Although optimized activity guide types also support classic components, classic components are not supported in SUOW activity guides.

Supported in optimized guided sequential or non-sequential activity guide types.

Important: Although optimized activity guide types also support classic components, classic components are not supported in single component activity guides.

Executes component PeopleCode events such as PreBuild and PostBuild for each component.

Executes component PeopleCode events such as PreBuild and PostBuild once only.

Auto-save is enabled for SUOW activity guides automatically. SaveEdit PeopleCode is triggered for every action item after a user clicks the Next button or navigates to any other action item.

Important: Components included in this activity guide must never invoke the DoSave or DoSaveNow built-in PeopleCode functions.

Note: Any push button configured with the Save action type is automatically hidden.

Auto-save is not enabled for single component activity guides. SaveEdit PeopleCode is triggered only once after a submit configured on the last step of the component.

To perform validation at a specific action item, override the behavior of the default Next or Previous buttons.

Does not support components from multiple PeopleSoft applications—that is, all the components have to be defined on the same local PeopleSoft application in which the activity guide is defined.

NA

Template Process Types

When an activity guide template is defined, you select one of seven process types for the template and its instances. The following table summarizes the features available with each activity guide type. Note the following regarding the columns in this table:

  • Opt Fl: Activity guide-optimized fluid components (that comply with the guidelines listed previously).

  • Fluid: Any standard fluid components (that comply with the guidelines listed previously).

  • Classic: Any classic components.

  • S/D: Summary-detail action items.

  • SUOW: Single unit of work.

  • 1 Comp: Single component.

Note:

Except for the one type labeled horizontal, all other activity guides present the list of action items in one type of vertical format or another.

Activity Guide Template Type Opt Fl Fluid Classic S/D SUOW 1 Comp

Horizontal optimized guided sequential

  • Presents the numbered steps horizontally.

  • Supports only activity guide-optimized fluid components in a simple hierarchy with only one level of action items.

  • Uses the activity guide subbanner to present navigation buttons.

Y

N

Y

N

Y1

Y1

Optimized guided sequential

  • Presents the numbered steps vertically in the left panel.

  • Supports only activity guide-optimized fluid components in up to a two-level hierarchy with summary and detail action items.

  • Uses the activity guide subbanner to present navigation buttons.

Y

N

Y

Y

Y1

Y1

Optimized guided non-sequential

  • Presents unnumbered steps vertically in the left panel.

  • Supports only activity guide-optimized fluid components in up to a two-level hierarchy with summary and detail action items.

  • Uses the activity guide subbanner to present navigation buttons.

Y

N

Y

Y

N

Y1

Optimized non-guided non-sequential

  • Presents unnumbered steps vertically in the left panel.

  • Supports only activity guide-optimized fluid components in up to a two-level hierarchy with summary and detail action items.

  • Displays the standard fluid banner without navigation buttons.

Y

N

Y

Y

N

N

Non-optimized guided sequential

  • Presents the numbered steps vertically in a drop-down list in the activity guide subbanner.

  • Supports any component type in up to a two-level hierarchy with summary and detail action items.

  • Uses the activity guide subbanner to present navigation buttons.

Y

Y

Y

Y

N

N

Non-optimized guided non-sequential

  • Presents unnumbered steps vertically in a drop-down list in the activity guide subbanner.

  • Supports any component type in up to a two-level hierarchy with summary and detail action items.

  • Uses the activity guide subbanner to present navigation buttons.

Y

Y

Y

Y

N

N

Non-optimized non-guided non-sequential

  • Presents unnumbered steps vertically in a drop-down list in the fluid banner.

  • Supports any component type in up to a two-level hierarchy with summary and detail action items.

  • Displays the standard fluid banner without navigation buttons.

Y

Y

Y

Y

N

N

Note:

1 Classic components are not supported in SUOW or single component activity guides.