Optional activities
Optional or adhoc activities is a feature added in the San Diego release. They're very useful because they allow your agents to add activities to a process at runtime. As we all know, real life rarely follows a strict playbook, and sometimes you have to insert adhoc steps or even perform the same step repeatedly to fulfill a request. Adding optional activities to a playbook is quite simple, but it's not yet natively exposed in Process Automation Designer. We'll have to take a little detour via the backend interface.
If you'd like to practice this firsthand, check out these CreatorCon Labs from K22, you'll find optional activities in CCL1062-K22 in exercise 2.
CCL1061-K22: Two sides of a process part one: Process Automation Designer
CCL1062-K22: Two sides of a process part two: Playbook Experience
Step 1: Add activity to process
First, you add your activity to your process as you would usually do, if you want the activity be available in only one of the lanes, put it there, else it doesn't matter which lane you pick.
Step 2: Make activity optional
- In the Core UI, use the Application Navigator All and type or paste sys_pd_process_definition.list and hit Enter.
- Click on your Process Definition.
- In the related list Activities find the activity that you want to be optional.
- Change the Start Rule from its current value (probably Immediately or After Previous) to Manual.
- If you want the activity to be available at a playbook level, not just lane, you can remove the value in the Lane field.
- Save the activity.
- Switch back to PAD and reload the page (F5), note that your optional activity doesn't show anymore.
Step 3: Test it in a Playbook
- In PAD, hit the test button.
- Choose a record.
- Check your process in Playbook Preview.
- You can find detailed instructions on how to add the optional activity to your running playbook here on Docs.
Safe Harbor outlook
We are working on making this available in the PAD design interface in an upcoming family release.
