Process Automation Designer - Don't Understand How to use Collect User Data Activity

[Marc D]

I have been playing with Playbooks and Process Automation Designer to demonstrate its capabilities, and for the most part, I'm satisfied with what is possible. However, there is one major issue. I have been trying to use the Collect User Data activity, and I cannot for the life of me figure out how it works. No matter which selection I use for the "User form for data collection" field, the Collect User Data activity within any test or actual playbook will always display no input variables, and the only option on the playbook will be to skip the activity.

The official documentation is no help - it is very bare-bones for this specific activity and covers nothing about how to display anything or actually collect inputs.

I would appreciate any explanation on how "Collect User Data" for Process Automation Designer works, with a specific example/screen shot of it working.

[yaronguez]

Sorry! I know how challenging this can be. Here's a helpful blog post on how to use it.

Also, in our Utah release you'll be able to pill pick directly to the data collected.

[Marc D]

I'm sorry, but I have gone over that blog post and it mentions the Collect User Data activity exactly 0 times - the only times it is mentioned is in other peoples' comments, which have themselves either gone unanswered or have received answers seemingly unrelated to Collect User Data.

Am I to take this response to mean "Collect User Data does not work at all, you must create a custom activity"?

[yaronguez]

It means that, as of today, you need to create a custom activity definition to consume data collected by the "Collect User Data" activity. This custom activity can either output the collected data explicitly so it can be consumed by subsequent activities or consume the data itself. Because a custom activity is required, it's usually easier to just forgo the "Collect User Data" activity and create a single custom activity that collects the data AND consumes it / exposes it. Most cases for "Collect User Data" revolve around collecting one-off data that doesn't need to be used somewhere else such as for logging what was done.

[yaronguez]

Good news! In our upcoming Utah release, you will now be able to dot-walk directly to any data collected by the "Collect User Data" activity. No custom activities needed!