Workflow actions

Conditions and validations

You use conditions and validations to customize the presentation to the user and to define the behavior of a workflow. The options for conditions and validations are the same. The difference between conditions and validations is their effect on the behavior of the Task View when a user completes their work.

• You can use conditions to restrict the list of actions that are visible to users. Conditions can hide branches of the workflow based on the values of the current object's fields, or the values of fields on related objects. The following list shows some examples of how you can use conditions:
  • You can define a condition that displays Escalation on the Actions button if the loss amount is greater than $1M.
  • You can define a condition that hides Submit on the Actions button if given fields are empty.
  • You can define a condition that hides Submit on the Actions button if all related action items are not closed.
  If the action has Auto-Advance Stage set to True, the conditions control whether the action advances the workflow to the next stage. If the condition is not met, the auto-advance action waits until the condition is true before it advances. On an auto-advance action, conditions can refer to the current object only. For example, if the condition is true when the Validation Reviewer field is not empty, the auto-advance action waits until the Validation Reviewer field is set with a value and saved. The action advances the workflow to the next stage only after the field is saved. The following examples show how auto-advance actions work:

  • You can define an auto-advance action that progresses to the next stage when a user saves the object with a specified set of field values. If the user saves an object with a loss amount greater than $1 M, it can automatically take the Escalation action.
  • You can use auto-advance conditions to create a branch node that automatically picks the correct workflow path based on an object's field value. If there have two types of issues, IT and OR, the workflow takes the correct branch based on the condition on the issue type. The user follows the workflow for their issue type and is unaware of the other issue type.
• Validations check that an object has specific attributes for the action to complete. If the validation fails, an error is displayed and the user must take corrective steps. Examples include:
  • You can define a validation that makes certain fields mandatory when the user clicks Escalation. If the fields are empty, an error is displayed. The user must provide values to continue.
  • You can define a validation that requires all related action items to be closed. If they are not closed, the user must close them to continue.

Operations

Operations control what is done when the action completes. For example, when an object is approved, you can create an object, start another workflow, or set a date field to today's date.

Order of validations and operations

Validations and operations are performed in the order given. For example, an action can perform a validation, then an operation, and then another validation.

Initial and final actions

The first action in a workflow is from the start stage to the first standard stage. This action occurs automatically without user input. You can use this action to define initial properties for the workflow. If the workflow has multiple first standard stages, each action from the start stage to the standard stage must have a condition.

The final action in a workflow is from the last standard stage to the end stage. You can use this action to reset any field values, if needed, and to define fields you need for the next workflow, if there is one.

Auto-advancing to the next stage

You can set actions so that the workflow automatically advances to the next stage when the user arrives at the originating stage. For example, in Figure 1, Action 3 has the Auto-Advance Stage property set to True. When the workflow is on Stage 1, the user selects an option on the Actions button to advance to Stage 2. Because Action 3 is set to auto-advance and Action 3 is the final action, the workflow advances to the End stage automatically.

You can configure operations and validations on an automatic action. If an operation or validation fails, the workflow goes back to the last stage where the user selected an option on the Actions button. In Figure 1, if an operation on the automatic transition fails on Action 3, the workflow goes back to Stage 1 and an error is displayed.

You can define conditions on automatic actions. All conditions on the action must be true to advance to the next stage. If any of the conditions are not true, the workflow waits until the object is in a state where the conditions are met. If you have more than one automatic action, only one of the actions can have all true conditions; otherwise, an error is displayed.