In what ways can you map values to custom workflow activity inputs?

[Joey Alain1]

Apologies if this has been asked and answered elsewhere, I'm finding a lot of the material on Orchestration is from 2015/2016 and since it's changed quite a bit, it's difficult to find relevant answers.

When working in Orchestration -> Workflow Editor, specifically when creating a custom workflow activity, I have the option to define some custom workflow activity inputs (as shown in the image below).

From here, I can drag these into the execution window and use them however I like. When testing inputs, I can simply manually populate these fields with whatever I want, but how do I map values to these inputs I've defined normally? The only extra field that I can see that is made available when using them is the [Default] field on the Inputs tab. Or am I supposed to be using custom script activities to assign values to these inputs somewhere earlier in the workflow?

I'd just like to understand the difference between doing it this way, vs simply skipping the Inputs tab altogether, and just referencing variables declared or set elsewhere in the workflow using custom script activites, for example.

Thanks folks!

[SanjivMeher · Accepted solution]

1) Double-clicking a custom workflow activity from the workflow editor nav menu, opens the activity editor and allows you to build/change the activity. But you're not hard coding inputs in here other than setting defaults if you want some, this was the confusing piece for me.

[SM]: That's correct. You can add a default value for each input or test your custom activity. But no hardcoding. Value must be passed from the workflow where it is used.

2) Single-clicking that same custom workflow from the workflow editor nav menu opens that activity's properties and allows you to set the values of the variables/inputs you've defined, but will do so for all instances of that custom activity you then drag and drop onto the canvas.

[SM]: Not sure about this. But this is not required. Because if you are doing any modification, you will do it by double clicking the custom workflow activity. Any modification you do to the activity, will not reflect in other workflow where it is used, until you checkout those workflows and publish again.

3) Dragging that custom activity out of the nav menu and onto the canvas, and then double-clicking it opens the activity properties (similar to above) but this time you're adjusting the values of the defined inputs for that instance of the custom activity only, not all going forward.

[SM]: Thats correct.

[Joey Alain1]

Appreciate all of the info, thanks Sanjiv.