A process can call another process through a linked process
activity. When the linked process activity is triggered at run time,
the linked process is run. After the linked process is completed,
the parent process resumes execution. When you group together related
activities in a separate process, instead of in a subprocess, you
can reuse that process in other processes that share that set of activities.
For example, the steps for creating a customer account might be common
to several different processes. If you group these steps together
in a Create Customer Account process, you can use linked process activities
to call this process from all processes that require it.
About this task
Linked processes encapsulate logically related steps within
a process while retaining the high-level view of the parent process.
However, linked processes differ from subprocesses because they can
be accessed and instantiated from processes other than a single parent
process. In previous product releases, linked processes were known
as nested processes.
Procedure
- Open the parent process in Process Designer
- In the Definition page, add a linked process to the diagram.
- In the Implementation tab of the
Properties view, select Linked Process.
- Select an existing process for the linked process to call,
or create a new process. You can also dynamically call one of many
linked processes at run time, depending on your needs, by using a
variable defined in the parent process. See Calling a linked process dynamically.
- In the parent process, connect the linked process activity
to other elements in the process flow.
- Variables in a linked process activity are local to the
linked process. If you want to pass data into or out of a linked process
activity, you must map the inputs and outputs of your linked process
to the inputs and outputs of the linked process activity in the parent.
Complete one of the following steps in the Data Mapping tab
of the Properties view for the linked process activity:
- If you declared variables in the parent process that have
the same names and data types as the input and output variables in
the linked process, use auto-mapping to have the inputs or outputs
of the linked process automatically mapped to variable defined in
the parent process.
- If the variables declared in the parent process do not match
the variables of the linked process inputs or outputs, you can manually
select the variables to map.
- Click Save or
Finish
Editing.