Design › Designing Client Procedures › Lesson Activity › eGolfer Home › Complete the Flows › The Dialog Flow Browser

The Dialog Flow Browser

Let us look at the Dialog Flow Browser, which is used to detail the flows between Client procedure steps.

Follow these steps:

1. To open the Dialog Flow Browser, select eGolf Services from the Navigation Diagram and, while holding down the Ctrl key on your keyboard, select eGolfer Home. Then, from the Toolbar, select the Join… icon to bring up the Dialog Flow Browser.

   There are essentially five sections to the Dialog Flow Browser:

   

   At the top, the browser displays the two procedure steps involved in the flow. In our case, we are flowing From: EGOLF SERVICES HOME (source) To: EGOLFER HOME (destination).

2. To the right of the procedures, we specify whether we want this flow to be a Transfer or a Link. Change the drop-down list to Transfers to.

   If we were using a Link type flow, we would have to define two of everything, since a Link essentially represents a two-way flow. We would have to specify two exit state values, two sets of actions to be taken, two commands, and two sets of view matching if necessary. We will still have to define two of everything, but only once, for each of the two Transfer flows we will define.

3. The Flows On… exit state represents the exit state value the From: procedure step needs to set to initiate the flow. The exit state value we want to trigger the flow from the EGOLF SERVICES HOME page to the EGOLFER HOME page is XFR TO EGOLFER HOME. Select the Flows On… push button. Select the business system EGOLF SERVICES and expand it by selecting the Expand/Contract push button. Select the exit state value XFR TO EGOLFER HOME and select the Select push button.

   You may be thinking that we already set that exit state value in the eGolf Services Home procedure step. However, merely setting the exit state system attribute to some value does not automatically cause a flow. We have to add the flow (as we are doing now), and for each flow that we add, we have to define what value the exit state system attribute has to have in order for this particular flow to be taken. We can have multiple flows emanating from a procedure step, but only one will be taken upon completion of that procedure step, and it will be the flow with the matching flows on exit state value defined for it.

   If this were a Link, the Returns On… exit state would be the exit state value the To: procedure step would need to set to initiate the return back to the From: procedure step.

4. To the left side of the Dialog Flow Browser are the actions to be taken and commands to be passed. For these types of applications, we normally use Display actions and seldom have a need to send a command. For the action to be taken At 'To' Pstep:, select the Display radio button.
5. Finally, we need to specify the data we want sent from EGOLF SERVICES HOME to EGOLFER HOME. Select the Data Sent radio button. This is similar to the standard view-matching dialog. To the left side of the top panel it shows the import views of the To procedure step (in this case, the EGOLFER HOME procedure step). To the right of those views, the browser displays the views from the from procedure step that we have matched to them; presently there are none. We know that we want to pass the golfer information from the EGOLF SERVICES HOME page to the EGOLFER HOME page. For flows, we always match exports to imports. Therefore, we want to match the export golfer in EGOLF SERVICES HOME to the import golfer in EGOLFER HOME.

   In the top panel, which shows the import views in the destination procedure, select the IMPORT GOLFER. The bottom panel now shows the Possible Supplying Views (export views) from the EGOLF SERVICES HOME. Scroll down in the bottom panel if necessary and select EXPORT GOLFER and then select the Match push button. In the top panel you can now see the two matched views.

6. Select the OK push button at the bottom left of the dialog.
7. Save your model.
8. Set up another Transfer, this time from EGOLFER HOME to EGOLF SERVICES HOME. There is no data to send. The Dialog Flow Browser should look like the following example:

   

9. Save your model.

   Note: When you add new objects to the Navigation Diagram, the diagram can show dashed or self-referencing lines, indicating a possible incomplete definition of some objects. To refresh the Navigation Diagram, close and re-open it.