Applies to version 8.0.x; Author: Kamil Nedza

Description of functionality:

WEBCON BPS – Designer Studio allows you to perform certain actions periodically. Unlike timeout actions, periodic actions need not be tied to a specific document. They allow you to automatically register documents or move the existing ones. You can also perform SDK actions, which gives you a wide range of possibilities in the mass processing of the existing documents.

Example of implemented functionality:

Your company has an expense workflow into which all company expenses are entered.  You want to create a periodic action that will create a report workflow once a day. The document will contain an SQLGRID table which will show all the expenses recorded on a given day.

Configuration:

Create a report workflow that will store information about your spendings. The flow consists of only two steps (“Registration” and “Created reports”). It has three form fields:

• Date of report  – the date form field
• Report – an SQL table
• Total expenditure – floating point

This instruction does not include information on how to create a workflow, so all details connected with workflow configuration will be omitted.

Figure 1. View after creating the Report workflow

 

Now move on to the “Registration” step. Set an action on the path so that it will set the “Date of report” form field to the current date as you follow the “Register” path.

 Figure 2. Configuration of the “Set [Date of report]” action

You also set an action to calculate the total expenditure from the reported day:

 Figure 3. Configuration of the “Set [Total expenditure]” action

Next, configure the “Report” form field. Create an SQL query that will return data from all “expense workflows” registered on the “Workflow report” registration day.

Figure 4. View of the “Report” form field configuration

When the ” Report workflow” is ready, go to the cyclical action settings. Click on “Report workflow” in the tree on the left and go to “Global actions”.

Figure 5. View of the configuration of global actions

Next click on “Periodic (start),” and then click on “Add”.

Figure 6. Adding a new cycle

By clicking on “New cycle” you go to its configuration. Change the name and set the Interval for one day. In addition, set the action so that it repeats itself forever.

Figure 7. Configuration of the cycle

You have already created a “Blank” cycle which does not perform any actions yet. Select the already created “Create a daily report” cycle in the tree and click “Add”. A new action has been added to your cycle.

Figure 8. Adding a new action to the cycle

After creating the action, set its parameters and click on the “Configure” button.

Figure 9. Setting the parameters for a cyclical action

Complete the configuration of the action. The setup is the same as for ordinary actions assigned to documents.

Figure 10. Configuration of a cyclical action

After configuring the action make sure you have saved all the changes. Go to the cycle and run it by selecting “START”.

Figure 11. Starting the cycle

Ready! If you wish the cycle to start again, simply restart. Every time you click on “START”, the cycle will restart. The number of correctly performed cycles can be seen in the lower part of the window.

Figure 12. View after starting the processes.

 

Verification of the functionality:

The cycle has been completed correctly. Go to the site and check if the new document has been created. Open it and make sure that everything has been done properly. The table displays all the data on documents from the “Expense workflow” workflow of 2014-07-28.

Figure 13. View of the report form created by the cyclical action.