Creating an unstructured (ad hoc) BPD activity

An ad hoc activity in a BPD has no input wires and is started as required by knowledge workers or according to predefined preconditions, rather than by a predefined process flow. Such activities can be required or optional, and they can be defined as repeatable or to run at most once.

About this task

Knowledge workers can start unstructured activities from the Activities section in the Process Instance details page in IBM® Process Portal.
Note: If an in-flight process instance is migrated to a new version of the business process definition (BPD) that has a new unstructured activity, a new token cannot be created for the activity. Therefore, when a new unstructured activity is added, it is recommended that you leave existing instances in place.

Procedure

To create an unstructured (ad hoc) activity, complete the following steps.

  1. Drag the activity from the palette to your process diagram.
    Important: Do not add any input or output wiring to the activity. If you add any wiring to the activity, the activity is no longer unstructured. The Activity Behavior section is only displayed for unstructured activities that have User Task, Subprocess, or Linked Process implementations. For these implementations, make sure that the check box The activity runs even though it does not have an inbound flow is selected.
  2. Specify the behavior properties of the activity.
    1. Select Properties > Implementation > Activity Behavior.
    2. Indicate how the activity is started.
      • If the activity is started by the system, select Automatically by the process.
      • If the activity must be started manually by the user, select Manually by the user.
    3. Indicate whether the activity must be completed.
      • If the activity must be completed before the process can complete, select Yes. The activity is required.
      • If the activity does not have to be completed for the process to complete, select No. The activity is optional.
    4. If the activity can be run multiple times, select Repeatable: The activity can be invoked multiple times.
    5. If the activity is started by the system, and must be hidden from users, select Hidden. This is a background activity that users will not see.
    6. If preconditions must be met before the user or system can start the activity, select There are preconditions that must be met before the activity can be performed, and specify the conditions that must be met.
      1. If there are multiple conditions, use the Match field to select whether all must evaluate to true, or whether it is sufficient for any one of them to be true.
      2. To specify the conditions by selecting a variable, a comparison operator, and another variable or literal value, use the default form.
        1. Click the variable selection icon to select from a list of variables.
        2. In the next field, select the type of comparison that is required, such as is equal to and not equal to.
          Tip: The choices that are available depend on the type of the variable that you selected. For example, for numeric, date, and time variables, you can also select is less than, is less than or equal to, is greater than, or is greater than or equal to.
        3. In the next field, either enter a literal value or the name of a variable, or click the other variable selection icon to select from a list of variables.
      3. To specify the conditions as JavaScript expressions, click js to switch to the JavaScript expression form, and enter the JavaScript expression for the condition. To return to the default form, click js again.
      4. To add more conditions, click the add icon.
Parent topic: Creating a business process definition (BPD)