Taskspace: pass information to invoked workflow?

In Taskspace, we have a form for viewing a particular object. We added an "invoke button" which calls a configured action that is set to start a workflow. How can we pass information to the workflow? Specifically we want to pass form field values into the workflow's process variables - but a different approach is entirely acceptable (perhaps via a process package for example).

Can this be done using the xCP toolset or should we resort to code?

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DCTM_Guru

Look in the Process Builder user guide under Initiate Activity. In that activity, you specify a e-Form to collect values from your form and map them to process variables through Data Mapper.

aabdallah

Sorry, but it's still not clear to me: I've looked in the user manual for Process Builder, and I have the process open in the tool in front of me now. The Initiate Activity only has three tabs active in "Activity Inspector": Properties, Data, and Display.

Under "Properties", I have set the "Form Name" to be a Taskspace component (an initiate activity form created in Forms Builder).

Under "Data", I have a couple of process variables (both simple strings), and a package composed of a single custom object type.

I have not configured anything under "Display".

But I do not see any mechanism for doing a data mapping as you are suggesting...?

So just to make my question clearer: given a generic form, and an invoke button on that form, how can I get information from the form INTO the initiate activity of the invoked process...?

DCTM_Guru

It would be under Data. If you dont understand the basics of Process Builder, I suggest you take the online training course. You will a lot more questions to come if you dont understand the fundamentals of how to use Process Builder.

aabdallah

Well, thanks for the constructive criticism. But I respectfully believe the issue is still unresolved: what you have suggested is something that solves the problem of:

"Given an Initiate Process template that is associated with an Initiate activity for some process, take the data from the form and pass it into the process."

This I have already understood how to do weeks ago.

But the problem I am facing is more complicated than that:

"Given a form - a Document View template - where an object is being viewed, there is an Invoke Button which is configured to start a process... that process has an Initiate activity that also has a form - an Initiate Process template - attached to it. How can we pass information to that process so that when the Initiate Process template of that process comes up, it has certain fields filled in from the original Document View template data?"

The more general problem that I am trying to solve is a general mechanism to go from "form to form". I am an old Java architect with 15 years of experience, and I am simply trying to push the xCP tools as much as possible to release them to power users, and feel comfortable they will be able to get reasonable work done. But I am beginning to suspect that we will not be successful; xCP seems not quite ready for prime/superuser time. This is my honest opinion. I do think it will get there though; it shows a great deal of promise.

If you still believe the problem is my lack of understanding, that's fine, let me know one more time please. But I respectfully don't see it as being as straightforward as you maintain.

Thank you for your help nonetheless.

aabdallah

By the way, this whole question becomes moot if you - or anyone else - can suggest a solution for the following: within a process that has several manual activities chained together, with each activity having a form attached to it, is it possible to structure the process to be executed by its performer without having to go to their Inbox for each activity? In other words, every time the user submits on a form, the next activity is run and the user is transferred immediately to the next form.

Doing that will solve the general problem I am facing to a large extent... Is it possible within xCP?

tariqislam

For each manual activity, if you define the Form name under Properties to be the specific form, under Performer> set Automatically on behalf of a performer (workflow supervisor) and set the Execute this method automically: to dm_noop_auto_method, this might work.

DCTM_Guru

Hi Ahmed,

In your original post, you did not mentioned you wanted to pass values from "form to form". All you said the following:

"... How can we pass information to the workflow? Specifically we want to pass form field values into the workflow's process variables."

My answer was addressed your question in this context. Now that you have made more clear that you want to do form-to-form, my suggestion is not applicable.

As you indicated in your follow up post, I might have an alternative solution. Instead of worrying about moving form to form, can you just create one form with multiple tabs and the button would move through one tab to the next?

aabdallah

Thanks for your help again. I am not at work right now (in the middle of the night in my part of the world), but I am happy to see that there may be a different way to get the results we need. I'll definitely look into the solution you're suggesting and see if it works out - I have neither considered or worked with multiple tabs within the same form under the xCP toolset, but hopefully it's fairly straightforward. I am wondering what the mechanism will be to move from tab to tab (instead of form to form), but I would like to try/learn more first by myself before I ask about this.

Thanks again, and I'll let you know what happens.

aabdallah

Tariq, thanks for the suggestion too. I'll try it and see what happens **** willing.

Ciruli

Ahmed -

There isn't a way to go from form-to-form directly as you describe in your post from Jan 11, 2010 9:35 AM.

Johnny Gee's question is a good one -- is there a reason that these need to be on different forms, or could they in reality be separate tabs on the same form?

And are these consecutive forms always viewed by the same user?

tcsimon58-E26LH

Any luck with this? I'm also trying to minimize a bunch of back-and-forth to the Inbox.

aabdallah

tcsimon, no I haven't gotten far. The best I've gotten so far is to create a custom object type that represents the "core data", similar to the Grant Management Application, the grant_request_type. That custom object type is derived from dm_folder, and so it can hold other data objects in it. When I view a particular folder, I've added a button to the strip of buttons at the bottom to invoke a workflow, passing in the folder to that workflow. I am relying on that object type to contain information that will be useful for the next step.

All of this unfortunately - and it has been many hours - has ended nowhere. The object, when sent as a package, does not expose its custom attributes so the user cannot see what is in that object.

It's not important to me anymore to find an elegant solution in Taskspace. So we are going with a very simple barebones approach that asks the user to enter in redundant information. We're under a deadline, and we are used to Java, far more expressive. Learning can come later.