Using Custom Activities Custom activities behave like any other activity in TIBCO ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks. To use a custom activity, perform the following procedure: 1. Locate the custom palette containing the custom activity on the My Palettes tab. 2. Locate the custom activity within the palette. 3. Drag and drop the custom activity into a process definition in the design panel. The name of the process definition in the Custom Activity and the name of the process definition in which the Custom Activity is included should be unique. If the names are same, the input and output schemas of the custom activity are not displayed. 4. Create a transition to the custom process and specify the input to the custom process on the Input tab. Global Variables in Custom Activities The custom activity may rely on global variables for user-specified information, such as database connection information or JMS topic names. When a user places a custom activity within a process definition, any global variables used by the process referenced in the custom activity that are not already defined in the project are placed in the global variable list of the project. You should document any global variables required by a custom activity so that users of the activity can specify an appropriate value for each global variable. Trace Information and Packaged Processes When tracing is enabled, the trace information for activities executing within a custom activity is written to the log file. This allows you to obtain information that will be helpful if you need to debug a custom activity. When a user of a custom activity experiences a problem, enable tracing and examine the log file to aid in finding the problem.
