More about Flow Action rules

Complete the text in the Short Description field of the flow action form carefully. It appears at runtime as a user choice. Note these best practices:

• Start the Short Description text with an imperative verb such as Attach, Update, Create, Send, Cancel, Resolve, or Approve. Choose language that reflects the worker's perspective, not what the application does next internally.
• If a standard flow action meets the functional needs but you require different Short Description text, create a field value rule named @baseclass.pyCaption.name (where name is the Short Description of the standard rule) and enter the text you want in the Localized Label field.
• If your application is to support users who have multiple locales, choose a Short Description text carefully, and maintain a list of them. When practical, choose a text value already included in a language pack, to simplify later localization. Create a field value rule named @baseclass.pyCaption.name (where name is the Short Description of your application flow action rule) in each language-specific RuleSet. See About the Localization wizard.
• Create simple, explicit flow actions that record one decision or outcome, so that busy workers choose the correct one and have no uncertainty as to what will happen next.
• Design the assignments so that each assignment has no more than five to seven connector flow actions. Offering users too many choices may increase errors. If the application truly requires users to select one choice from dozens of possibilities, sequence the alternatives in a screen flow or by using multiple assignments. For example, have users pick a major grouping or category in the first assignment, and then one minor choice within that group in the second assignment.

To build and use a flow action, take these steps:

As you build your application:

1. Create a flow action rule. As you create the flow action, you record several choices. You determine the HTML form that appears when a user selects this flow action. You can restrict a flow action to appear only to certain users, based on access roles. Using when conditions, you can conditionalize whether the flow action appears at all.

2. If the flow action is to be local, associate the flow action with an assignment task in your flow. If the flow action is a connector flow action, associate it with a connector in your flow, with an arrow leading from the assignment task to another task on the flow diagram.

At runtime:

3. To test a flow action, log in as a worker or manager with appropriate access roles. Enter the Process Work workspace. Enter a work object for a flow that includes an assignment that references the flow action. As it executes, the flow creates an assignment for the work object and places the assignment on a worklist.

4. Finally, log in as the person whose worklist has the assignment. From your worklist, click the assignment. You see the Perform harness form, and you see the short description of your flow action in the selection box in the Perform form. When you select the flow action, the HTML fields defined for that flow action appear.

After you save a flow action form, click the toolbar Preview button () or type the equivalent keyboard shortcut CTRL+ALT+P to view an approximate runtime rendering of the flow action presentation. (Many flow action rules depend on context. Even when the rule is correctly configured, the Preview display may fail and report JSP errors if this flow action rule depends on clipboard contents that do not exist or other rules that cannot be found.) BUG-7472 rejected

Click the Run toolbar button () to test the flow action with data from the clipboard. See How to test a flow action rule.

As with the Form tab, the system renders both the Preview and Run displays using the styles of the skin rule identified in the Skins field of the Run Process In group of your General preferences. If the Skins field is blank, these displays use the styles marked Work on the Styles tab of the skin identified in your current portal rule. See Designer Studio — Setting your preferences. 5.5 GRP-503

When you save a flow action rule, the system converts your HTML and JSP tags or directives to Java source code. As a learning or debugging aid, you can review this Java code.

C-1665Click the Show Java toolbar button () to see the system-generated Java code that implements the flow action rule. The window presents a read-only preview of the Java that implements this rule instance. This Java code is not identical to the Java that executes at runtime, which includes Java code inlined from other rule instances and reflects rules in the requestor's Rule Set list.

The area of a work object form that allows users to choose among flow actions is known as the action section. In V6.1, as a best practice, include the standard action section Work-.pyActionArea on your Perform harness rules. (Other standard action sections introduced in V5.X remain available and supported.) See Pega Developer Network article PRKB-26090 How to present actions on a work object form.

Through directed inheritance, Rule-Obj-FlowAction class is derived from the Rule-HTML-Section class.

HG - In V6.1, newly created flow actions reference a section for their appearance and layout. The V5.X approach, identified as Define Form on the HTML tab, is not supported in V6.X.

Having each flow action reference a section promotes reuse: two flow actions which differ on the Security tab or Action tab, but have identical formats, can both reference one section rule that defines the format.

If your application includes flow actions which use the Define Form approach, you can upgrade them easily to reference a section by running the pxShowBulkFlowActionDisplay activity. You are given a list of flow actions in the system that have not yet been upgraded. Click Run, either individually or in bulk, to updates flow actions to create a section rule for the Layout tab and reference that section rule. For examples, see Pega Developer Network article PRKB-25978 How to convert flow actions to the V6.1 section reference form.

You can also update flow actions individually by saving layouts as sections, using the Save As a Section icon. Refer to Flow Action form – Completing the Layout tab.

If your application RuleSets contain flow action rules that are not auto-generated, run the Rule Security Analyzer before locking a RuleSet Version, to look for possible security issues.