Business process designer > BPMN processes > Graphical elements / Edit App Item

Edit App Item

edit-app-item-1With the Edit App Item activity, you can automatically update app items in the course of a business process. For instance, you can add a file to a document's page, edit the total amount in a purchase order, change a customer's shipping address, or change the date of a supplemental agreement.

How to use the Edit App Item activity

For illustration, let's take a look at the Contracts app. When closing a sale, an employee creates an app item and enters all the related information, such as the total amount to be paid, payment dates, discount percentage and so on. However, the Contract file field remains empty because the file will be created later on in the course of the process.

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As soon as the employee saves the app item, a business process is launched. In the course of this process the finance specialist approves the data entered in the app page. Next, according to these data, a contract file would be created. This can be done automatically with the help of the Generate from template activity, or the employee could do it manually within the assigned task. The generated document must be added to the app item page in the Contract file field. To do this, the Edit App Item activity is used in the business process.

Set up the Edit App Item activity

Go to the process page, click the gear icon on the right panel to open the System elements tab. Drag the Edit App Item activity to the process diagram and place it where editing an app item will be necessary.

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Double-click on its shape to open the settings.

General tab

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  • Name*. Enter the name of the activity as it will be shown on the process diagram.
  • Task name. Enable the Generate name from template option to add context variables to the name that the executor will see in the task list and in the task page.
    • Template*. Click the {+} icon in the right corner of the field and select a variable. You can also add conditions and functions as you would for a template item name. This will generate a more informative name.
      If this option is not used, the text specified in the Name* field will be displayed in the task list and on the form.
  • Variable*. Specify the App type variable from the business process context that refers to the app item you wish to edit. If the variable does not yet exist in the process context, click the Create a new variable button.
     
    When you specified the context variable, you can rename it or add a description. To do this, click the Change variable settings button. The changes made will be displayed in the context of the process.
  • Update type. Specify the way to change the item:
    • Manually. The user or a group of users specified in the swimlane with the activity will be assigned a task to introduce changes on the page of the app item. The fields on the page will be filled with the previously specified data, which can be edited.

If the swimlane with the activity includes a group of responsible users, the task of changing the item will be assigned to all the employees in this group. As soon as someone starts working on the task, it will disappear from the list of tasks of other employees.

    • Automatically. The fields on the item’s page will change in the course of the process automatically in accordance with the settings that you specified on the Field Values tab.

Field Values tab

When you add a variable, the Field Values tab will appear in the settings window.

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When automatically changing an item, specify the field to be changed in the App field column. In our case it is Contract file. In the Process variable column, specify the corresponding process variable. We have specified the File variable because the contract created from a template will be stored in it.
 

In the Process variable column, enter the appropriate process variable. We have specified the File variable, since it will store the contract created from the template.

When changing an item manually, you can also map fields to variables. If the user has to edit the app item manually, yet the contract file is generated from template, it will be automatically added to the task form. The employee working on the task can check the document or replace it if necessary before saving the changes.

After you have specified all the parameters, click Save.

Now, in the course of the process, as soon as the data are approved, the created file will be saved to a variable, and then displayed in the field on the app item page.

 

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