Object Parameters

each activate object can also have any number of parameters defined for it these parameters are used to describe additional information for the object parameters in activate administrator are shown when selecting an object from the tree view on the left each parameter is shown with its name type a short summary of it's value who has the ability to read this parameter (parameters like objects can be secured) you must have read rights to read the value of a parameter the owner of the parameter see parameter owners for more information last modified date last modified by parameter types each parameter can have a specific parameter type the available parameter types are below type description string basic string value reference a reference to another activate object class reference a reference to a net assembly this is used for enable plugins within activate group reference a reference to an active directory group this reference contains the adspath of the specified group user reference a reference to an active directory user ou reference a reference to an active directory organisationalunit xml a generic xml value task arguments specialized type for storing the xml task arguments for a task service reference a reference to a service for the service this value is often used to provide default services to users when they are created or added to an additional role webform a specialized type for storing an xml based web form this form definition is used to dynamically create forms at run time workflow this type is used to define custom workflow for a task script this value stores an activate script this value is used extensively to customize the activate system and tasks html the value stores html and provides an html editor for changing the value message an email message including subject and message body folder reference a reference to an activate folder resource and optionally the group associated with it dl reference a reference to an active directory distribution list this reference can be linked with the dl that is within the activate dl resources or to the dl within active directory parameter owners each parameter in the system has an owner this owner is based on the 'site' that last updated the parameter the owner is used to determine if the parameter has been changed locally activate parameter are the 'system' owner and mean that they have not been changed the local site is generally called 'local' unless changed this means the parameter has been changed locally and will not be overridden when an upgrade is performed parameter inheritance parameters defined at parent objects are inherited by all child objects this works in a similar way to file acl entries in the filesystem hint you can click on the 'more ' button in the parameter view to view all inherited parameters there are a number of rules that control how this works normal rules parameters are inherited by all child objects parameters of the same name override parameters from the parent object this behaviour can be changed using the parameter flags normal rules parameters are inherited by all child objects parameters of the same name override parameters from the parent object this behaviour can be changed using the parameter flags inherit only, not inherited and allow inherited these are detailed below parameter flags parameters have a number of other flags flag name affect required this is a required parameter if the parameter is blank or null then it will be shown in red a verify will create a task to fill in the parameter inherit only this flag specifies that the parameter is only inherited by child objects requests for the parameter at the current object will fail not inherited this flag specifies that the parameter is not inherited by child objects the parameter will be available on the current object only allow inherited by default creating a parameter of the same name on a child object will hide all parent parameters this allows more specific information to be defined in the hierarchy as required however there are time when you wish to allow inherited parameters and define parameters on the current object requests for the parameter will result in the parent and child parameters being returned advanced advanced parameters are not shown within the normal view unless the user has selected 'advanced' from the view menu within the administrator tool local local parameters are never exported from the current database this is used when exporting data between activate environments for example, a group parameter in the test environment is probably not the same as the group parameter required in the production environment template template parameters are used to put in place holders for values that should or could be defined on objects these parameters are only shown when 'advanced' is selected from the administrator tool volatile parameter value history is not kept value is not cached, everytime the value is required it is read from the database this can cause performance issues if not used carefully turning on the volatile flag has the following consequences volitile parameters are used when the value of the parameter is expected to change often for example, this is often used in background scripts where they wish to keep a count or last run time and they are updating this value often this is an advanced feature use with caution parameter history all changes to parameters are logged into history this history can be access by right clicking on the parameter and selected 'all tasks >show history'