Extending Entities by Adding Group Actions

Last Updated: 08/18/2016 Introduced in Verision: 2.0

Folder entity actions are actions which can be taken upon a folder entity. Custom folder entity actions are built in flows, and saved within a [MyFolderEntity] folder for the entity type, within a Designer Folder. You can set up actions for a single entity, or for a group of entities. This topic sets up action to manipulate a group of entities.

 
The group action can be seen from a report that displays travel itineraries:
DashboardAssignAgent.png
 

Example

In our example, we will add a group action to our pre-designed folder entity Travel Itinerary. This action will be called Assign Travel Agent. Using a form, it will allow us to assign a travel agent to handle the travel request, then loop through the collection of entities and update the agent name with the user selected in the drop-down menu on the form. No other properties of the Travel Itinerary entity will change. The action will be for a group of Travel Itinerary entities (however a single Travel Itinerary entity can be handled as well).

Begin in the portal by navigating to the entity actions folder for our Travel Itinerary entity. If this folder does not exist yet, in a Designer Folder create the folder using the following option:
AddEntityActionfolder.png
 
Select the correct type from the Type Name drop-down menu:
 
FolderType.png
 
To create our action, within the Entity Action folder, click the Create Group Action button.
 
CreateGroupAction.png

In the resulting Create Entity Action pop-up, give this flow the name “Assign Agent” and ensure that Base Entity Group Action Flow is selected as the type. Click OK.

GroupActionFlow.png
 
Here is what the completed flow will look like:
 
AgentHandlingFlow.png
 
 
First, place the Get All component in the workspace for retrieving the list of all Portal users. It is found under Integration > Internal Services > Account Service. The output from the Get All step will map to the input for the drop-down menu list of user email addresses shown in the form.
 
To see the input data automatically included in the flow, click on the Get All 1 step and select View Step Data. Entities represents the group of entities passed in to the flow. This will be the collection presented in the form.
 
EntitiesInput.png
 
The Select Agent Form contains a dynamic data grid, a drop-down list of the Portal user email addresses, and an Assign Agent button. Configuration of the data grid is as follows:
 
AssignAgentForm.png
 
 
In the Properties panel for the form, the input is specified as follows:
 
FormInputProperties.png
 
Next in the flow is a For Each Step to loop through the collection of entities to perform the Edit Itinerary step which updates the assigned agent name. The For Each Step is configured as follows:
 
ForEach.png
 
The Edit Itinerary step is found in the Toolbox tab, under the category Integration > Folder Entity Data Structures > Travel Itinerary.
 
ComponentList.png
 
The Edit Itinerary step is configured as follows:
 
MapEditItinerary.png
 
Each of the Item attributes are mapped into their respective properties in the Edit Itinerary step, and the EmailAddress attribute of the SelectedAgent is mapped to the Assigned Agent field.
The next step in the flow is to present a closing form to the user stating the agent has been assigned, then the process calls a subflow that completes the assignment step to create a task for each itinerary, assigned to the agent.
Save and close the flow.
 
The group action can be seen from a report that displays travel itineraries:
DashboardAssignAgent.png
 
 
 
 
 
 

Additional Resources