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About Step Actions

Use step actions to send notifications and receive approvals. For example, you can use system actions to call Application Program Interface (API) functions, set attributes, and lock attributes. When you build a process, you can supply parameters to a stock system action or API, and then add them to process steps. To use a system action in a process, add a step to the process and then supply parameters to the system action for that step. For example, to copy documents from a project template, you can use a system action.

A step can have no actions or multiple actions. An action in a step may or may not be dependent on the results of previous actions in the same step.

For example, in step S0, the following actions are independent from each other:

• Action A1 (manual action): Send action item “Approve Doc MRD.”
• Action A2 (system action): Set status of the project to “Open.”
• Action A3 (job action): Start synchronous job “Datamart Extraction.”

Actions can also be chained together. In this case, the execution of a later action depends on the completion of previous actions. The results of one action are used as input parameters of the next action. For example, in step S1, the following actions are chained together:

• Action A1 (system action): Set the idea status from “Submitted to Approval” to “Approved.”
• Action A2 (subprocess action): Convert the approved idea to a project in synchronized mode.
• Action A3: (manual action): Send the project manager an action item to complete a preliminary budget for the project converted from the idea.

At runtime, all actions in a step are executed sequentially in the order listed on the Process Definition: Steps page.

Step Action Types

A process can have the following step action types:

Manual action

Sends action items to resources, groups, roles, or profiles to which they must act upon for the process to continue. With manual actions, you can associate variables with the subject and body of action item messages. This provides:

• Users who are sent action items with relevant context information on the action items they are reviewing.
• Process designers with flexibility in defining context within an action item by utilizing attribute information from multiple objects and incorporating them within the action item.

System action

All these system actions are available for all objects in the process (including primary, linked, implied objects; action item objects, documents, and forms):

• Attribute setters. For example, "Set Budgeted Benefit," "Set Department Manager," and so on.
• Lock or unlock selected or all attributes to make the attributes editable or non-editable.
• System Operations. For example, "Copy Financial Plan from Template," "Copy Staff From Template," and so on.
• Object conversion that uses a mapping code to map the attributes from the source object to the target object. For example to convert an Idea to a Project.

Run job

Runs jobs that run in the background on a scheduled basis. Jobs can run in synchronous or asynchronous mode. If you call a SQL job from a process, the following parameters must be passed in the specified order:

P_PROCESS_INSTANCE_ID, P_STEP_ACTION_ID, P_STEP_INSTANCE_ID

Custom script

Executes to import or export data from an external system. Custom scripts can run in synchronous or asynchronous mode.

Subprocess

Subprocesses are invoked as embedded processes within the context of the current process. By embedding subprocesses within a process, you can model complex workflows. When adding an action that is a subprocess, you can only add subprocesses that are active, that are either primary, linked, or implied to the master process, and that have the same partition as the primary object. A subprocess does not follow the partition association mode defined on the primary object of the process.

System and manual actions can be added to a process only if a primary object is defined.

Error Handling at Action Level

When there are multiple actions per step and an error occurs at runtime, the error is identified at the action level. You can either fix, retry, or skip the action instance containing the error. On the Initiated Process: Messages page, when you retry the action, the action with error is executed again on the new assignees of the action item. When you skip the problem, the action with error is skipped, and the next action in the list is executed.

More information:

Create Step Actions

Stock Job Descriptions

View and Correct Runtime Errors