Adding Data Fields to an Activity

You can create a new data field for an activity:

Procedure

  1. Select the activity for which you want to create a data field.
  2. On the Properties view, click Data Fields.
    Note: Activities that do not support activity-level data fields (such as gateways) do not have a Data Fields tab on their Properties view.

    A validation error is displayed if you define a data field for an activity on the Data Fields tab, but the destination environment selected for the parent process does not support activity-level data fields for that activity type.

    Click . A new data field is added.

  3. Modify the data field’s properties as appropriate.

Result

Note: You can only assign a value to an activity-level data field by using the Scripts tab on the activity. See the appropriate implementation guide for more information.
  • The process begins with a start message event (the process is started upon receipt of a one-way message from an external web service). The business analyst decides whether elements within the incoming data from the web service can be used to uniquely identify instances of this process. If the incoming data can be used to identify the process (later on in the process when there are incoming messages), the business analyst creates a correlation data field (for example, OrderRef), and associates it with the start event on the Interface tab.
  • After the user task, the receive task (Receive Authorization) waits for the correct incoming authorization. To do this, the business analyst associates the OrderRef correlation data field with the Receive Authorization task. When an incoming message is received, the incoming data is compared to the correlation data to make sure that it applies to that process instance.

After creating correlation data fields, and associating them with the relevant events or tasks, the correlation data must be mapped with the incoming data. This is the job of the solution designer. For more information, see the appropriate implementation guide.