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Step 7: Perform Mapping and Transformation for Each Activity

As data flow through your business process, different activities require different components of the data. On the Input tab of each activity, TIBCO Designer displays the available process data and the activity’s input represented as schema trees.

•	The process data is the list of available data items within the process at the point where the activity is located (an activity has access to all output data from any activity that is executed before it in the process definition).

•	The activity input is the list of input values that are required or optional for the activity.

For each activity, you map the process data to the activity input.

Each item in the activity input schema has an expression field for specifying the contents of the item. You can conditionally map the process data to the input using XPath expressions. You do not need detailed knowledge of XPath to create simple expressions. For the most part, you can drag and drop items from the process data schema to the activity input schema, and the correct XPath expression appears automatically.

When you specify the input schema for an activity, the specification is represented internally as Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformation (XSLT) code. Normally, you do not need to examine the XSLT code generated by the mappings. However, if you are familiar with XSLT and you wish to see the actual code, you can right-click on any node in the input schema and choose Copy from the popup menu. Then open a blank text document and choose Paste. The XSLT is displayed in your text document.

For example, when the ShippingSchedule process fails, an email is sent upon return to the main process. The email address information could be mapped from the original order to the mail activity’s input fields.

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