Lanes

A lane represents one stage in your business process. Use lanes to sequence process activities in an order that makes sense for your cross-enterprise workflow. A lane is made up of many sequenced activities that are grouped in a logical way. In the Process Automation Designer design environment, you can add a lane to your process by clicking + Add new lane.

The visual separator for your lane depends on the start rule that you select. For example, choosing for Lane 3 to start immediately after Lane 2 causes the visual separator to appear as dotted lines. Choosing for Lane 4 to start with Lane 3 causes the visual separator to appear as a chevron. For more information, see Lane and activity properties.

Activities

In Process Automation Designer, an activity represents one step in your overall business process. In the system, an activity is one instance of an activity definition. For more information on activity instances and activity definitions, see the Process Automation Designer architecture and activity definitions.

Adding an activity to your process

In the Process Automation Designer design environment, you can add an activity to a lane by clicking + Add an activity, which causes the activity picker to appear. In the activity picker, you can search for an activity to add or select one from the list of Common Activities. To choose an activity for a custom application, first select the application and then select the activity from the resulting list within the picker.

If there isn't an activity that fits your use case, you can create your own activity definition to add to the activity picker. For more information, see create an activity definition.

Interactive and Non-Interactive activities

Activity categories include:

Interactive Activities

When an interactive activity runs, it prompts a user for input in a Workspace playbook experience. For more information, see Interactive activities.

Non-Interactive Activities

When a non-interactive activity runs, it runs entirely behind-the-scenes and requires no user input. For more information, see Non-Interactive activities.

Lane and activity properties

In the properties panel, you can add names, descriptions, and start rules to the lanes and activities in your process. Click the show or hide properties panel icon () to show or hide the basic properties for your currently selected lane or activity. If you don't select an activity or lane, your process definition's properties appear in the configuration panel instead. The basic properties for each lane and activity include:

Activity inputs

Each activity has inputs that you can configure. Activity inputs are data that you provide so that the activity runs and performs its function appropriately. For example, the Instruction activity when a Message input, whose data displays a message within a Workspace playbook card. You can view each activity's inputs by opening the properties panel for the activity and clicking Configure activity. On the Configure your activity screen, the activity's inputs appear in the Variables section under Inputs.

Creating static and dynamic values for activity inputs

You can add static data to an input by entering text next to the label for the input. To add dynamic data to an activity input, click the data pill picker icon () and navigate, or dot-walk, to the data pill whose dynamic value you want to use when your activity runs. You can select dynamic data from fields in the input record. If your activity has a start rule of After Previous, you can also select dynamic data from the outputs of other activities in your process. For more information on dot-walking to related fields and records on the Now Platform, see selecting fields on related tables using dot-walking.

Note: You can dot-walk to fields in a Reference but not in a Document ID or Sys ID.

The inputs for interactive activities typically provide data that renders in a playbook for a Workspace agent to interact with. The inputs for non-interactive activities can render in a playbook but don't require any user input in order to run. For more information, see Interactive activities and Non-Interactive activities.

Editing activity inputs and outputs

You can change the default inputs and outputs for an activity definition by selecting the Activity actions icon () on an activity, and then selecting Edit subflow in Flow Designer or Edit action in Action Designer. For more information on how to work with the default inputs and outputs for activities in Process Automation Designer, see Create an automation plan.

Note: You must have the appropriate user roles to access Flow Designer and Action Designer. For more information, see Flow Designer roles.

Design considerations