Automation Agent: Actions

This page is accessed via Business Process Automation > Agents and Milestones > Automation Agent. It is on the Actions tab.

An agent can contain one or more actions that are performed when the agent conditions are satisfied and the agent is triggered. An agent may contain any combination of actions.

Oracle Transportation Management supports two types of actions: business object actions and utility actions. Business object actions are specific to the agent type. For example, the action Approve Bill is only available when the Agent Type is BILL. Also, the action Secure Resources is available for an agent type SHIPMENT, but does not make sense for an Agent Type of INVOICE. Utility agent actions are available for all agent types. These include, for example, conditional agent actions (IF, ELSEIF), notifications, and send integration. A list of business object agent actions exists.

An agent has the ability to control the flow of actions using nested IF statements. Oracle Transportation Management includes actions that allow you to add control flow elements to the agent body. Actions within an IF statement are indented to visually indicate the parent-child relationship. There is no limit to the number of levels in which IF statements can be nested.

Actions run sequentially until:

• the last action is complete
• an action fails due to parameter or save condition settings or some other system logic error
• an action generates an error

An agent action defines a set of connected activities. The action is not complete until all activities connected with the action are complete. For example, (depending on the shipment mode and workflow configuration), the Build Shipment action may include moving it to execution and securing resources and therefore this action is not complete until all these related activities finish.

An agent is not transactional. If an error occurs while running an action, changes made to data and state by previous actions are not rolled back. For this reason, an agent may have an Error Handler with a set of actions that run only when the agent detects an error in an action. You can use the Error Handler to set error states, notify interested parties or undo data changes if appropriate. Errors occurring in Error Handler actions are logged and ignored.

Clicking the Show/Hide Statistics button will display/hide agent statistics, such as the Run Time, if they are available. If the Agent statistics level is ACTIONS, each action will show the average and maximum completion time for that action. This time is measured from the time the action begins execution to the completion of the action process. See Configuring Agent Logging and Statistics for more information on using this.

Adding Actions

Use this page to construct a list of actions that you want initiated for the agent.

1. Click Add Action to display a list of all the actions that you can use for the agent. A secondary page appears for actions that provide additional parameters (refer to the Agent Actions help page for more information on the parameters).
2. Optionally, select a Data Type Association to allow this automation agent to perform actions based on another related business object through Data Type Association. For example, an automation agent with a shipment agent type can run agent actions available for the order release agent type. To do this, select a data type association of SHIPMENT TO ORDER RELEASE.
3. When using a Data Type Association to run an agent action against related objects, the Create New Process check box appears. If selected, the related objects run in a separate workflow process. The initial agent does not wait for the related object actions to complete. This provides you a way to avoid deadlock potential when raising custom events.
4. Select the Action. The object type defaults to the defined agent type. The list of actions from which you can select is based on the object type.
5. Enter the parameters for the action, if applicable.
6. Click Save to close the window.
7. Click to insert additional actions and construct the action body to your requirements.
8. Click next to an action to display the parameters you defined and make any necessary changes.
9. Click to remove an action from the list.
10. Click Finished after adding all your actions.