Activity
form
Completing the Steps tab
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|
Complete the Steps tab to define processing.
You can create
activities with more than thirty steps, but a best practice to
promote modularity is to limit each activity to thirty or
fewer steps. If your planned activity requires more than
this limit, consider how to break it up into modular parts for
clarity and maintainability.
If this activity is to support a Declare Trigger or Declare OnChange rule, select an Activity Type on the Security tab before entering steps.
This form is
wide. Click the collapse arrow (
) to hide the navigation panel and
reveal more of this form. When done, click the expand arrow (
) to restore the navigation
panel.
For more detail on parts of this tab, see:
Steps
tab — Entering preconditions
Steps tab — Iteration
Steps tab —
Entering a method and parameters
Steps tab
— Entering transitions
Steps tab
— Using the Show Calls button
Methods by
function
Methods
by name
This tab defines a numbered list of method calls, known as steps. Activities may contain one or dozens of steps. Steps execute in sequence except as described. Each row contains:
Iteration instructions, for looping within a step
Precondition — an optional True-False
condition to be tested before the method starts
Parameters used by the method or instruction
Transitions—
optional conditions to be tested after the method
completesMany choices and values for each row are initially hidden.
Click any field in the row to make additional controls and
fields visible. Use the standard add row (
),
append row (
), and delete row (
) buttons with this array.
You can reorder rows using drag-and-drop. Click the numeral at the left of a row and drag. Also, when you have two activity rules open (each with the Steps tab displayed) you can drag a step from one activity and drop it onto the steps array of the other. Or, right-click the numeral to access a context menu with Cut, Copy, and Paste options.
Element |
Description |
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Click to insert a new blank row above the current row. |
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A number identifying this step. As the activity runs, the system executes steps in numeric order, with exceptions as described below. You can reorder steps easily. Click and drag to move any step to a different position in the array of rows. |
|
Click to expand the form to display all elements of
this row — Iteration, precondition, method
parameters, and transition. Click |
| Label |
Optional. Enter a one- or two-character unique step label name if you intend to reference this step as a destination in an (earlier-numbered) precondition or transition. To make a step become a comment, enter two slash marks (//) in the Label box. When the activity executes, the system ignores and skips over steps that are commented out. When you mark a parent step of a multistep iteration as a comment, all the child steps of that iteration are also treated as comments. In system-generated Java, label names are referred to as block names. |
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The When the row is selected, click the |
| Description |
Optional. Enter a brief description of what this step does, as internal documentation. |
|
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The |
| Step Page |
Optional. Identify the page on which this step is to act. If you leave this field blank, this step acts on the primary page of the activity. Start the page name with a letter and use only letters, digits, and the underscore character in the page name. See Understanding page names and reserved pages. You can enter a period followed by a
property name to identify an embedded property of mode Omit the parentheses if this step involves an
iteration over the elements of a All page names must also appear on the Pages & Classes tab. For most methods and the Java instruction, the step page must already exist. However, the following methods create a page from the Step Page information when it does not exist:
If the step is to contain a Call or Branch to another activity, identify the page that is to become the primary page of the called activity (unless it is the same as the current activity's primary page). The class of that page must match the Applies To key part of the activity. If this step is within a multistep iteration of type For
|
|
|
Click |
| Method |
A few methods are used only in Parse Structured rules,
and cannot appear in activities. Certain methods cannot
be used in activities with an Activity
Type of You can leave the Method field blank; any preconditions and transitions in the step are evaluated normally. |
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After you've entered a method, you can click this button to review the types (not the values) of that method's parameters. If you entered a Call, Branch, Collect or Rule instruction, you can click this icon to display the target activity in a new window. If you entered the Java instruction, click to display the Java source code. |
|
Transition |
The When the row is activated, the click |
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Click the trash can button to delete a step. |
These appear at the bottom of the Steps tab:
Element |
Description |
|
Click to expand all step rows. |
|
Click to collapse all step rows. |
| Show Calls |
Click to display a calling hierarchy display. See Activity form — Using the Show Calls button. |
| API Version |
Accept the default value of
|
to collapse the form, hiding
these elements. (Or click
indicates that
this step is iterated.
button to add an
iteration or 
to access the details of
the existing iteration. See 
Page names are
unique within the clipboard. When creating a page, if
another page with the name is already present at the same
point in the clipboard structure, the system deletes it
and replaces it with an empty page.
to
expand the Method area. In the expanded
area you can define or review parameters for the method,
or other aspects of the method or instruction, such as
Java source code. See 
Optional. Identify the method or instruction
that this step executes.
A value of