Now that we have taken a tour of the workflow configuration screen, let's start talking turkey. Activities are groupings of actions that work together to complete a unit of work. If you think of your workflow as a flow chart on paper, activities would be the boxes (generally speaking) while the actions would be the logical steps needed to execute the task.

There really is no right answer regarding how many activities a workflow should have. Like a box of Lego® bricks, you can use different pieces in different ways and still end up with the same output. The best way to get a feel for activities is experience. Before we walk through building a sample workflow though, let’s look at some of the basic configuration options for activities.

Activation

Activities won't run until they are activated by the workflow engine. There are two ways that an activity is activated:

1. Start-up: You can configure certain activities to be activated when a workflow starts.
2. Action Activation: If an activity is not activated at start-up, then it must be activated by an action on an activity that was.

Simply defining an activity doesn't guarantee that it will ever be executed. If it is not activated with the start of a workflow and no action ever activates it, it will never run.

Configure Activities

When you add a new activity to a workflow type, you'll see a new blank activity panel. The configuration options are shown below:

1. Name - Be sure to give your activity a descriptive name. If this was a flow chart on paper, the name would be the text in the box.
2. Description - Don't cheat yourself by providing a short description. It's often helpful to outline both the purpose of the activity and the flow logic that will be needed to execute.
3. Active - This tells the workflow if this activity is active in the configuration. While this isn't used very often, it can be helpful if you need to temporally disable an activity from running.
4. Activated With Workflow - This defines whether the activity will be automatically activated at the beginning of a workflow. If this option is enabled, the activity's icon and border will be shown in green to help you quickly identify it as a startup activity.
5. Security - Security on a workflow activity helps with activities that must interact with a person (mainly through entry forms). More on entry forms can be found below. Note: The security icon for an activity will not appear until after the workflow has been saved.
6. Attributes - Activities can have their own attributes. When they're needed, they're configured here. More on when to use activity attributes is discussed in the next section.
7. Actions - This is where you'll define the actions that make up your activity. The order of the actions is important because they will execute in the order you provide. For more details see the Actions chapter below.

Use Activity Attributes

Like workflow attributes, activity attributes allow you to store the data needed to execute your workflow. Many workflows can get by with using just workflow attributes. But there will be times when a specific activity is run more than once. If you'd like to keep track of data for each execution, you'll need to define activity attributes. The data in these attributes is only available within the specific activity instance.

As an example, say you had an activity that seeks approval for a purchase order. As a part of the approval, you might want to allow the approver to enter notes about their decision. You'd also like your workflow to allow the approval step to be re-run until an approval is received (for instance the approver may deny it at first, it goes back to the requester who edits it and then re-submits it for approval). If the approval note was stored as a workflow attribute, it would be overwritten each time the approval activity is run. When defined as an activity attribute, each instance of the activity would have its own instance of the note attribute.

Assign Activities

Activities can be assigned to a specific person or group. While security determines who's allowed to view or edit an activity, the assignment describes who is responsible for completing it. Assignment only comes into play for activities that must interact with a person (mainly through entry forms). Assignments help workflows prompt the right people to enter the data that is needed. We'll touch more on assignments in the Working With Entry Forms chapter.