[Openflow-dev] Re: automatic application

[Daniele <d.t...@ic...>]

On Tuesday 12 November 2002 11:26, Sven Kramer wrote:
> Hi
>
>
> I'm still trying to do an automatic task. I have an activity wich routes to
> an other activity. In this activity an application is called which is
> nothing else than a python script(named index_html) that prints hello to
> the screen. When I set the start mode to automatic I get the error message
> I already sent to you. How can I execute this script automatically. Any
> ideas?
>
> greets Sven

Sven,

don't expect the 'hello' message to be displayed on your screen: the 
automatic start you set in the activity means that the script will be run as 
soon as the process instance gets in the activity, but the workflow engine is 
supposed to execute the script so there is no redirection to no page to look 
at.

Instead of printing a message (that won't be displayed in an automatic 
starting activity) try writing a script that does something like:

context.MyFolder.manage_addProperty('myprop', 'wow', 'string')

where "MyFolder is some folder you create outside the workflow. Try running 
and instance and then check the MyFolder properties: look for a prop called 
myprop. If it's there it means your automatic action has been accomplished.

Let me point out something you might have misunderstood:

Automatic activities aplpications are for the engine to run, with no human 
intervention. Automatic activities can be: automatic mail sending (warinings 
sent to somebody), SQL query to store some data, instance property handling. 
These applications are called automatically if the activity is set to 
"auto-start"

Non automatic activities applications are for humans to use, so they usually 
are something to interact with: html forms, reports and so on. These 
applications are called through an invocation to the workflow API 
"callApplication" (passing instance_id and workitem_id). Usually this 
invocation is triggerd from a list of html anchors a given user can see: its 
worklist. Try look at the html code of the "worklist" tab of OpenFlow.

best regards,
	Daniele =)


PS: since this mail might be useful to somebody else I'm posting it on the 
OpenFlow mailing list as well.