About Automation Plug-in Association
When you add an automated task to a process, you must associate at least one automation plug-in for the task. To associate an automation plug-in for a task, you open the automated task entity in the Automated Task editor, and add the plug-in to the task in the Automation tab. When you deploy your cartridge to the run-time environment, the OSM server detects a task that has an automation plug-in associated with it and the server triggers the plug-in to perform its processing.
An automated task might have only a single automation plug-in associated with it. For example, you might associate a built-in Automator plug-in with the task to interrogate the task data, perform some calculation, update the order data, and transition the task. In this example, as soon as the Automator plug-in has finished processing, it updates the task with an exit status, and the OSM server moves to the next task.
An automated task can have multiple associated automation plug-ins. For example, you might want to associate multiple plug-ins with a task to represent conversations with external systems. You can associate a built-in Sender plug-in to receive the task data and send it to an external system for processing. That external system might send an acknowledgment back to a queue, where a second Automator plug-in (one that is defined as an external event receiver: it receives data from external system queues) consumes the reply and updates the order data with the response. A third Sender plug-in might send the external system a message to begin processing, and a fourth Automator plug-in can receive the "processing complete" message from the external system, update the order, and transition the task.