Activity Lookup Attribute
- Seth Petry-Johnson
Summary
Activity Lookup attributes allow a Workflow to contain a reference to an Activity Definition.
Note: This page is about the Lookup data type. There is also an Activity Type called "Lookup" that serves a similar purpose.
Overview
There are various scenarios in which a Workflow needs to display a list of Activities for the user to choose from.
One use case is Course Instructors, if Instructors are represented as Activities rather than Members. In this case, the Provider can choose the appropriate “Instructor” when completing the Create Activity Workflow.
Usage and Appearance
Configuration
This attribute collects:
The Activity Type to restrict the options to
An optional SQL procedure to provide additional filtering against custom rules
Input mode
In input mode, displays a multi-select list containing the available Activities.
Read-only mode
In display mode, displays a list of the selected Activity Titles plus a link to launch the Workflow Overview for each.
Data Storage
This attribute stores a comma delimited list of Activity Ids and uses an external data handler to fetch information about the referenced Activity(s).
Course Instructors: An Activity would be created for each Instructor, and a Lookup attribute is used to link the Course activity to the Instructor activity. If there are business rules that control which Instructors can teach which Courses, the lookup can be filtered by a custom SQL procedure that implements those rules.
Only Activity Definitions with a Create Activity Workflow in a Completed Successfully state are selectable.
This Attribute is only useful for Organization type members.
The list of selectable Activities is filtered by Provider.
If the Workflow containing the lookup attribute is modifying an Activity, then only lookup Activities with the same Provider are returned.
If the Workflow is modifying a different type of entity, then only lookup Activities with a Provider ID matching the workflow owner are returned.
In the same use case of "Course Instructors", for example, this allows each Provider to maintain their own Instructor list.