Flow form — Editing in Visio
Utility shape properties

Field

Description

Enter a text name for this Utility shape. Choose a name meaningful to application users who see this on the work item history display, the breadcrumbs control (for entry points), and the Where-Am-I? diagram. For example, Compute Customer Open-To-Buy.

The shape name is only descriptive; it does not affect runtime execution of the flow. This name also appears inside the Utility shape on the Diagram tab.

Select a Utility activity to be executed when a flow execution reaches this shape. See Atlas — Standard Activities for Flows for descriptions of a few standard Utility activities.

You can ( although not recommended) enter the name of an activity that is not a Utility type. Doing so displays a warning message "The selected Rule is not a Utility activity" in the properties panel. Use the appropriate shapes for Assign, Connect, Notify, and Route types. For example, use an Assignment shape for Assign types.

Optional. Select the name of the application that you want to link to the shape. The value of this field is referenced with the flow diagram in application documents.

Optional. Select the name of the work type for the application that you want to link to the shape. The value of this field is referenced with the flow diagram in application documents.

Optional. Select the name of the specification for the application and work type that details the implementation requirements for the shape. The value of this field is referenced with the flow diagram in application documents and on the Implementation tab of the corresponding Application Specification.

If the utility selected requires parameters, supply a literal value for each parameter. PRPC validates these parameter values when you exit from Visio editing (unless the flow in is Draft mode).

You can use the notation param.name in a parameter field to refer to a flow parameter. In this case, you are instructing the system to set a value of a parameter to this call of the activity equal to the value of a parameter to the flow. (Inside the activity, the keyword param refers — as always — to activity parameters, not flow parameters.

Optional. Select or enter the name of a Rule-Message rule to control the text of an instances added to the work item history (the "audit trail") when a flow execution completes this shape. PRPC includes a few dozen standard messages in the Work- class. (Through field value rules, the corresponding text on work item history displays can be localized. See About the Localization wizard.)

Optionally, to reduce the volume of history detail instances, your application can prevent system-generated messages from being added to work item history. See Controlling the volume of generated work item history instances and the PDN article 25196 How to control history instances written to the audit trail.

Select to indicate that this Utility shape is an entry point, which a user can return to using the breadcrumbs control or the standard flow action Previous. The default is cleared.

Because a utility shape presents no user form, if a user clicks a breadcrumbs control to return to this entry point, flow processing resumes and pauses at the next assignment or other shape that requires user input.

This checkbox appears only when you select the Entry Point? checkbox. Select to restrict users at runtime from jumping ahead to this step without having completed the preceding steps. After having completed this step, users may jump back to it from steps that follow it.

For maximum user flexibility, clear this checkbox if your flow accepts inputs in any order. However, this approach is typically not workable for flows that contain fork and decision shapes, or that have intermediate shapes that are not entry points.