Activity Properties

Activity Property Reference
Tab Property Description
General Label Label for the activity that will be displayed on the diagram.
  Activity Markers Select from Standard Loop, Multiple Instance Loop, or Ad-Hoc. For more information, see User Tasks and Pageflow Processes .
  Participants Specify the participant responsible for this activity (see Creating a Participant ).
  Activity Type For example, Task, User Task, Service Task, and so on, (see Creating References ). If you select Call Sub-Process Activity, you must browse to locate the sub-process.
 
  • No Form URL
  • User Defined Form
  • Form
  • Pageflow
Configure the user task as follows:
  • No Form URL
     Select this option if you do not want to display a form for the user task.
  • User Defined Form
     Select this option if you want to use the Form Identifier field to point to a specific URI (for example, if you authored a form outside of TIBCO Business Studio). Manually enter the URI. TIBCO Business Studio cannot validate the URI, so ensure it is correct. If you select this option but do not specify a URI, upon export a standard form is created.
  • Form
     Use this option if you have created a form using TIBCO Business Studio Forms. Either automatically create a form (in which case the Form field is completed automatically) or browse to select a form from a Forms special folder.
  • Pageflow
     Select this option if you want the user task to call a pageflow. Browse to select a pageflow process. When deployed, the specified pageflow process is run when the work item associated with the user task is opened.
  Reference Task

(Activities of type Reference Task)

Select one of the following and browse to select the name of the task that is referenced from the currently selected task.
  • Reference Task Library Task
  • Reference Local Task
  Is a transaction

(Activities of type Embedded Sub-Process)

Select the New Sub-Process is a transaction checkbox if you want the new sub-process to become a transaction and therefore be under transaction control (see User Tasks and Pageflow Processes ).
  Chained Execution

(Activities of type Call Sub-Process or Embedded Sub-Process)

Specifies that the selected sub-process implements the chained execution resource allocation pattern (see Creating a New Embedded Sub-Process ).
  Sub-Process location

(Activities of type call sub-process)

Sub-Process location is populated with the path to the Sub-Process name that you select.
  Sub-Process name

(Activities of type call sub-process)

Browse to select the Sub-Process name.
  Runtime Identifier Field

(Activities of type call sub-process)

Specify the field that will be used in the runtime process engine to dynamically select a sub-process that implements a process interface. For more information, see Process Interfaces .
  Lifecycle

(Activities of type call sub-process)

Use this to configure whether the sub-process should execute immediately or whether its start request should be queued.

If you select Schedule Start Request, then you set the initial priority for the sub-process start and the tasks within that using the options in the Priority drop-down.

If you select Start Immediately then you can still set the priority of the task within the process in the process Work Resource tab.

You can specify whether sub-process instances should suspend and resume when the parent process is suspended or resumed by selecting or deselecting the Suspend/Resume With Parent Process tickbox.

 
  • No form
  • Default form
  • Workspace form
  • External form
  • Other
Specify the form to be used.

If you select Default form or Workspace form, you can click Preview to see a preview of the form layout.

Description   Optional textual description of the activity.
  Documentation URL The Documentation URL controls allow you to launch a web browser for the given URL (you can use the actual Documentation URL: label or the browser button).

The browser is opened either in TIBCO Business Studio (in the editor pane) or in an external browser according to the user defined settings (Preferences> General>Web Browser).

The activity tooltip popup includes the Documentation URL as a clickable hyperlink to launch the URL in a browser.

Interface (all task types except Reference) Visibility Specify the visibility of an event or task (whether it is private or public). Public events or tasks publish information (such as required parameters) to an external process or application. Private events or tasks to publish any information to external applications.
  Reschedule work item:

(User tasks)

Overwrite Data Already Modified In Work Item is unset by default. Check it to overwrite data already modified in a work item when you reschedule a user task.

This is the same as the setting available on the Map From Signal tab for a catch signal which reschedules a task.

  Parameters Allows you to select the data fields or parameters that the task requires as input and output.

By default all process data is available to a task. When you explicitly associate process data with an Event or task, only that process data is associated with the event or task. After you add data fields, you can control whether it is an input parameter, output parameter, or both by setting its Mode (to In, Out, or In/Out). You can also specify whether the process data is mandatory. For more information, see Associating Process Data with Events and Tasks

Note that for user tasks, inbound and outbound parameters are from the perspective of the form, not the user. This means that inbound parameters are sent to the form by the process, not the user. outbound parameters are sent to the form by the user. For more information, see the appropriate implementation guide.

Data Fields   Provides information about all data fields defined in the activity.
Work Resource Participants

(Manual and user tasks only)

This is the same as the Participant specified on the General tab.
  Initial Priority (Manual and user tasks only) Specifies a relative priority for the work item. The affect and meaning of this setting is destination specific (refer to appropriate implementation guide).
  Distribution Strategy

(Message events and user tasks only)

Allows you to specify a resource allocation pattern. For more information, see Resource Patterns and Work Distribution .
Re-offer Work Item Strategy... Allows you to govern the behavior when you open an offered work item and then close or cancel the work item to place it back in the work item list. You can choose to 'Re-offer On Close' or 'Re-offer On Cancel'.
  Piling (Manual and user tasks only)  
  Separation of Duties

(Manual and user tasks)

Allows you to specify that certain manual or user tasks must be executed by different resources at runtime. For more information, see Specifying Separation of Duties .
  Retain Familiar (Manual and user tasks)  
Scripts   Allows you to add text that describes various types of scripts that you want added to a task. It is the task of the solution engineer to translate the outline of the script into a scripting language supported by the selected destination environment. For more information about implementing scripts, see the appropriate implementation guide.
Map To Sub-Process

(Activities of type call sub-process)

  Use this section to create a mapping from an actual parameter (data field or parameter) into the formal parameters of the sub-process. Create a mapping by clicking a parameter, dragging to the destination parameter, then releasing the mouse button.
Data References Grouped by Data Contains a table with a row for each referenced data field, along with a list of the contexts in which it is used.
  Grouped by Reference Context Contains a table with a row for each context along with the data which is referenced.
Map From Sub-Process

(Activities of type call sub-process)

  Use this section to create a mapping from a formal parameter of a sub-process to an actual parameter (data field or parameter). Create a mapping clicking a parameter, dragging to the destination parameter, then releasing the mouse button.
Appearance Line Color Click the button next to Color to select the line color for the border of the selected activity. Click Set As Default For Type to apply your current color settings to any new activities of that type that you place on the process. You can revert to the default color settings by clicking Restore Factory Settings.
  Fill Color Click the button next to Color to select the fill color for the selected activity. Click Set As Default For Type to apply your current color settings to any new activities of that type that you place on the process. You can revert to the default color settings by clicking Restore Factory Settings.
  Task Icon Select a valid image file for the Studio project if one is available.
Extended   See the description of the Extended tab for the Process Properties .
Resource BPMN Extensions Allows you to enter duration values for the task as per BPMN. How these durations are used is dependent on how they are implemented in a particular destination environment.
  BPM Task Retry

(Service tasks)

Allows you to determine how to deal with task retry which is triggered by the activity when it determines that a failure may not be permanent.

Retry properties are not available for pageflow processes.

Maximum Number of Retries, Initial Retry Period and Retry Period Increment define the retry configuration on the following activity types: Service Task, Send Task (send one way, not reply), Throw Message Intermediate and End Events (send one way, not reply).

Maximum Retry Action defines the action to take when the maximum number of retries is reached.

  • process/server defined default - use system-wide default behavior (see "Configuring Error Handling Behavior for Process Instances" in the TIBCO ActiveMatrix BPM Administrator’s Guide for how to define this).
  • Halt - process instance halts. You can then use Openspace, Workspace or the BPM API to investigate/fix the problem.
  • Error - the process instance fails immediately and cannot be resumed. This value, if set, takes precedence over the System Error Action value set for the process. See the BPM Fault Configuration property on the Resource tab in Process Properties.
  Correlation Timeout (for Receive task with incoming flow) Set the following to configure the timeout for correlation events:
  1. Days
  2. Hours
  3. Minutes
  4. Seconds

These settings are used to configure the mimimum number of days/hours/minutes/seconds before the timeout occurs.

Dynamic Sub-process Task...(Dynamic sub-process tasks)

Allow Unqualified Sub-Process Identification

False: Sub-process names provided in the Runtime Identifier Field must be fully qualified unless they are located in the same XPDL package. Full qualification means /project/Process Packages/PkgName.xpdl.MyProcessName.

True: allow unqualified sub-process names to be used even if they are located outside of the XPDL package (when they will be dynamically discovered at runtime).

Note:
When an unqualified sub-process is provided in the Runtime Identifier Field, the process manager will look for the process in the following locations:
  • The same deployed XPDL package.
  • Any XPDL package in the same deployed project.
  • Any XPDL package in any deployed project.

The first matching named process will be used. If there are multiple processes with the same name in any one of these locations (i.e. the sub-process identification is ambiguous) then it will result in a runtime exception that will halt the process instance.