4.2 Understanding Workflow Activities

The Workflow Designer provides the following basic activity types you can use to build workflows.

	Start of Workflow	Starts the workflow when its associated triggers match incoming events from a data source. A workflow can have multiple Start of Workflow activities that create more than one flow at the same time. When you associate a trigger with the activity, you can choose an abstract trigger revision. For more information about abstract trigger revisions, see Understanding Abstract Trigger Revisions.
	Task	Performs a specific task, such as collecting user input or sending an email, before proceeding. An associated piece of code, or module, performs the task. Workflow Automation provides several activity libraries that group Task activities according to function. Each Workflow Automation adapter provides its own library of product-specific activities. Task activities in an Workflow Automation or adapter library have an icon that represents their functions, such as the Send Email activity.
	Join	Allows the process to split into multiple parallel flows or combine two or more parallel flows into one. Join activities require the workflow to meet the conditions on all incoming conditional connectors before it proceeds to the next activity. For more information about satisfying multiple conditional connectors with a Join activity, see Understanding How Join Activities Interact with Conditional Connectors.
	Wait for New Email Message	Waits for an incoming message that matches the defined filter. If a matching message does not arrive in the specified time frame, the process continues.
	Pause for Specified Time	Waits for a specified period of time or until a specified time before continuing.
	Capture Workflow Errors	Waits for errors to occur in the workflow. This activity sits outside the main flow. When an error occurs, the flow “jumps” to this activity and proceeds down an alternate flow that handles the error before rejoining the main flow.
	End of Workflow	Marks the end of the process. A workflow can have multiple End activities, depending on the number of sub-flows. If the workflow has multiple flows but only one End of Workflow activity, a Completed icon displays when the first flow terminates, even if other flows are still active.