CDD Report Activity

Any user with CDD privileges will have access to the criteria/prompts that are assigned as values from the model instance. Prompts that require specific values at run time cannot be used. However, symbolic values such as "first day of the month" can be used since the symbol is translated and the actual value determined at run time.

It is important to note that Workflow CDD reports represent a special subset of CDD reports in that once it is defined and used in a Workflow model, they cannot be changed (i.e., new prompts) without updating the definition in the Workflow CDD Report activity. This is because the actual report is not loaded into the Workflow CDD Report activity. Only a reference to it is loaded. Failure to do so will result in the Workflow CDD report not running as planned and perhaps even failing.

CDD reports selected in the CDD Report activity should not have a name and/or description containing the words "Variable" or "Form." These words are reserved keywords in Workflow; criteria will fail to save to Workflow tables.

Activity Properties

Who

The Who section in the Activity Properties window can be set to "None" since the CDD report is not assigned to a BusinessPlus ID. If you populate the Who field, the CDD report will run as that user and use their security settings. Otherwise it will use the Workflow user defined in the connection settings and user security settings.

Expiration Handling

Expiration handling is generally irrelevant for CDD report activities. However, it can be used to determine if a CDD report did not complete successfully (Workflow Engine Shutdown). Timeouts for Workflow CDD reports are handled within the Workflow CDD Report Manager.

Report Settings

Pressing the "Settings…" button underneath the Action control in the Activity Property window displays the CDD Report Settings dialog. After a CDD report is selected, the report criteria are loaded.

CDD Report: Name of the CDD report to be ran. This is a browse-only field since the user must select a CDD report from the CDD folders that the user ID has "execute" access for. The report can be selected by pressing the "Browse…" button. Selected reports should not have a name and/or description containing reserved keywords "Variable" or "Form."
Criteria: This field defines the criteria selected for the CDD report that is selected. The default value is "NONE" for all CDD reports. The user can also select a predefined criterion for the CDD report. Criteria fail to save if the selected CDD report name and/or description contains reserved keywords "Variable" or "Form." Selecting one of the predefined criteria for the CDD report results in individual prompts for the criteria to be loaded into the Prompt area below. Initial values are all set to Default if none exist.

Prompt Area
The Prompt area contains each of the prompts defined for the selected criteria of the CDD report. This area is initially populated with default assignments from the CDD report definition. However, these values can be overridden from information that exists in the Workflow model's instance data. The columns consist of the prompt name, the type of model data being used for the prompt (set to "Default" for default assignments), the table/list name if that is the source of the instance data, and the individual data item being used in the prompt assignment.

Assign Data: Assigning a source for the prompt is done by selecting the prompt item and selecting the "Assign Data…" button on the dialog box, which displays the Instance Information dialog. Prompt assignments can also be undone by selecting the desired prompt assignment and clicking the "Delete Data" button. If a default value exists, the prompt assignment will be reset to it.

Instance Information

The Instance Information dialog box is the same dialog box used by the CDD Report, Table Update, and E-Mail Notify activities. It allows the user to select a table/column (table triggered), a list item (SQL activity), a variable (model data element) or a value (including symbolic) from the currently defined model.

Registry Settings

There are several registry settings that allow the Workflow administrator to customize CDD processing in Workflow to meet their needs. These settings are located in the BusinessPlus Report Processing Service registry directory.

The registry settings are as follows:
Minimum Instances: Defines the minimum number of CDD instances that will run under the Workflow CDD Report Manager. Type DWORD. The default value is 2.
Maximum Instances: Defines the maximum number of CDD instances that will run under the Workflow CDD Report Manager. Type DWORD. The default value is 25.

FileStoragePath

If a CDD report is successful, the resulting report is placed into a temporary file storage directory on the server. This temporary file storage directory is defined in the registry under the directory/Report Processing Service (where directory is the name of the directory defined at install time) as FileStoragePath. The default location is C:\inetpub\wwwroot\IFAS7\CDDXML. In the Administrative Console, the File Storage Path is defined in Configure Local Server > Application tab, in the File Storage Path field. It is stored as an XML file and the report file name is the unique key of the Workflow CDD activities history record.

Execution

When Workflow services start and the Workflow engine executes a CDD report activity, it first checks to see if the Workflow CDD Report Manager has started the Workflow CDD applications (cdd32.exe). If not, it does so at that time.

The CDD report activity then passes a request to execute the CDD report to the Workflow CDD Report Manager. If the request is successfully queued, the report activity status is set "P" (Pending), and the model instance waits until the CDD report either successfully or unsuccessfully completes. When this occurs, the Workflow CDD Report Manager reports back to the Workflow engine and the next time the engine wakes up, it updates the status on the CDD report activity to reflect the success of the CDD report.

If the CDD report is successful, the report is placed into the temporary file storage directory, as discussed above. At this point, the role of the Workflow CDD activity is complete. If the user wants to route the information elsewhere, the currently available option in Workflow is the Documents Online activity which routes the temporary file into Documents Online and returns the new ID of the CDD report. This information is stored with the Model Instance and can be used to retrieve the URL of the CDD.