Workflow Overview

an activate workflow runs for every job that is submitted by activate activate workflows consist of one or more steps common types of steps include running scripts, getting approval from users or sending notifications activate workflows are considered 'declarative' rather than 'procedural' this is really the difference between 3gl and 4gl style languages a typical activate workflow will consist of just a few steps, whereas a traditional workflow engine would require pages of 'code' to perform the same tasks an activate workflow is normally stored in a 'workflow' parameter on a task the following is an example of a workflow with two approval steps the available workflow steps are step name description approval this step allows user approval to be obtained the approval step will send an email notification and then obtain the required approvals the approval step also sends reminders and escalates the approval when required notification the notification step allows an email notification to be sent notifications can also be sent in the future if required decide a decide step allows a decision and branching logic to be included scope a scope node is used to group multiple steps togeather execute this step allows an activate script to be executed delay this step allows the workflow to wait for a period of time wait this step allows the workflow to wait for sub tasks to complete or wait for the parent task to reach to particular point in its workflow end this step ends the current workflow parallel this step runs each child step in parallel for example, this allows multiple approvals to run at once all steps must complete before continuing ticket this step logs a service desk ticket via the //resources/service desk connector catch this step will catch any exceptions in the current scope the catch statement can then send notifications or perform any other actions the exception is available as a global variable called 'exception' and can be used in the catch notifications to send the specific error to someone for example, for just the messageor for the entire exception and stack trace fork this step forks the current workflow and job based on some criteria for example, it may seperate a task into multiple sub tasks where seperate approvals are required