Designing the Procedure Dialog › Flows › How Flows Are Initiated

How Flows Are Initiated

Each dialog flow is initiated by the source procedure step setting an appropriate exit state. Each transfer on a Dialog Flow Diagram must be associated with one or more exit state definitions that will trigger the transfer. These are called Flows On Exit States. Each link flow on a Dialog Flow Diagram must have at least one Flows On exit state.

Each link flow must also have at least one Returns On Exit State. After the destination procedure step finishes executing, the Returns On exit state causes control to be returned to the source procedure step.

For a given procedure step, only one flow can be associated with each exit state value.

When the logic of a procedure step concludes, the value of Exit State is evaluated with one of these results:

• If this value matches that associated with any dialog flow from the procedure step, the dialog flow is executed. The flow is executed whether it is a transfer, link, or return from a link.
• If this value does not match any exit state values associated with any dialog flows, you must specify some corrective action.
• Corrective action is appropriate to the procedure implementation.
• In a batch procedure, the particular transaction would have to be aborted or reversed, and the message included as the reason on some reporting file. In extreme cases execution would have to be halted, and the message passed to the initiator of the batch procedure execution. See also Designing for Restart.
• The screen associated with an online procedure step is displayed again with the exit state message appearing in the CA Gen-supplied Error Message field.
• These are the types of message displayed, each of which has been assigned different video properties, as listed in the following table.