Work with Activities
Activities are the building blocks of your process. They usually represent the work that is performed within the process. Use the Activities palette to add activities to a process by dragging and dropping them onto the process editor canvas. After you add an activity, you define its properties, data association, forms, and sequence flows where they apply.
Activities are divided into the following types:
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Human
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System
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Events
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Gateway
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Other
Human
Human activities represent tasks where a process participant is required to perform the work. The task can be a simple interaction, such as filling out a form, or part of a more complicated workflow that requires input from multiple process participants.
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A submit task provides a form or submit action that the user acts on to create a request or provide information about a certain subject.
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An approve task provides a form for review or an approve/reject action that the user acts on to approve or reject the request.
System
System activities allow you to define interactions across business processes and services. For example, you can use a Service activity to invoke an external service or process, or a Call activity to call a reusable process from within the current process.
| Activity | Description |
|---|---|
| Abstract | Use to designate a placeholder for another activity. |
| Call | Use to call a reusable process from within the current process. |
| Data Mapper | Use to assign values to data objects and variables within the process. |
| Decision | Use to incorporate decision services exposed through a decision created within your application, into your business process. |
| Notify | Use to send an email notification to a user. |
| Send | Use to asynchronously start or send a message to another process. |
| Receive |
Use to receive a message from another process. Send and receive activities are typically used as pairs to communicate between asynchronous processes. See Use Send and Receive. |
| Service | Use to communicate with other processes and services. |
| Subprocess | Use to group related activities in your business process into inline subprocesses. |
| Event Subprocess | Use to handle exceptions that occur in the runtime life cycle of a process. |
| Upload Form | Use the upload form activity to upload snapshot of a form in a process instance to an external database or service. |
Events
Event activities can be divided into two types:
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Start and End activities that define the starting and ending points of a process
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Intermediate activities that can either occur within the typical flow of your process or trigger an interruption with your process
| Activity | Description |
|---|---|
| Start | Use when no instance trigger is defined, such as when a process instance is created by another activity, or as a placeholder when the start event isn’t known. |
| Form Start | Use to trigger a process instance when a user submits a form. |
| Message Start | Use to trigger a process instance when an email message is received. |
| Timer Catch | Use to control the flow of your business process using a time condition. |
| End Event | Use to mark the end of a process path, or as a placeholder. |
Gateway
Gateway activities determine the path a token takes through a process. They define control points within your process by splitting and merging paths.
| Activity | Description |
|---|---|
| Exclusive | Splits a process into multiple paths, where process flow continues down only one of the paths. The decision about which path the process should proceed along is based on data-specific conditions. |
| Inclusive | Splits a process into multiple paths, where process flow can continue down multiple paths depending on conditional sequence flow. |
| Parallel | Splits a process into multiple paths, where process flow continues down all paths simultaneously. |
Integrations
- Drag and drop an already configured integration connector from under the Integrations category in the Activities palette.
- Drag and drop an integration activity from under the System category in the Activities palette, and configure the connector's properties from the activity's properties pane.
Other
Notes are equivalent to sticky notes. They’re temporary and you should use them more as a reminder and delete them as soon as the information is used.