Configuring a Task as Automatic Ad-Hoc

The automatic ad-hoc activity allows you to define one or more standalone tasks (with no incoming / outgoing flow) in a business process that are executed zero or more times during the lifetime of a process instance. An automatic ad-hoc activity is executed when it becomes enabled by any of the initializer activities being processed and the transition of the given precondition from false to true.

Note: This feature is not available for pageflows.
You can have a number of ad-hoc activities in a process. Their preconditions determine if and when they are executed.

Procedure

  1. Check the Ad-hoc Activity Marker on the General tab of the properties on a User task or Call Sub-Process task.
  2. Click on Ad-Hoc Configuration Properties. The Ad-Hoc Configuration tab opens.
  3. General: optionally select Interrupt main process until completion.
    This pauses the main process flow, resuming on completion of the ad-hoc activity. It does not stop you processing currently active work items or sub-processes, event sub-processes or other ad-hoc activities. However note that data will not be returned to the process instance until it re-activates.
  4. Check Automatic Invocation.
  5. Access: in addition to defining whether users have the ability to cancel an ad-hoc activity using a system action (see System Actions Reference in TIBCO Business Studio Concepts), optionally it is possible to define whether a user can cancel a specific ad-hoc activity by specifying Organization privileges that the user must possess.
  6. Enablement and Execution: Define the condition under which the activity is enabled and executed automatically.
    • Initializer Activities: (optional) Select one or more Initializer Activities which are activities which are in the same process. This activity needs to complete before the precondition is evaluated. This can be useful for ensuring that the the precondition is not evaluated until the data referenced is initialized.
    • Precondition: Set an optional precondition script that controls enablement of the ad-hoc activity.
      Note: For Automatic ad-hoc activity, at least one Enablement condition should be specified: that is, either the Initializer Activities or the Precondition script must be specified (both can be specified).
      Note: The condition must be a boolean expression which evaluates to true. The condition has to go from true > false > true in order to retrigger so you must reset the result of the expression to false before it can become true again.