Flow Editor

The flow editor contains the following main parts:

Toolbar

Provides options to manipulate the flow.

Palette

Located on the right side of the tool, the palette provides a list of activities that can be used as the building blocks for your flow. To add any of the activities to your flow, drop them onto the editor canvas.

Editor canvas

The main area of the tool that displays the graphical view of your flow. Activities can be dropped here from the palette and then linked together. See Working with flows for more information.

Source view

At the bottom left of the editor canvas, is the Source tab. Clicking it displays the source view of your flow. (Clicking the Editor tab beside the Source tab displays the graphical view of your flow.)

Properties dialog

Click the Properties link on the toolbar to display the properties of the activity you selected in the canvas.

The following screen capture shows the flow editor.

Working with flows

A number of tasks can be performed using the flow editor to create and edit your flow. These basic tasks are described in the following sections.

Adding an activity to the flow

To add an activity to your flow, drop the activity from the palette onto the editor canvas.

Adding an activity into a While activity

The While activity allows other activities to be added to it. When added to the canvas, a While activity displays an expand icon () on the While figure. Click this icon and the editing area for the While activity is shown in a new tab. You can now drag and drop to edit the activities inside While activity. When you have finished editing the sub-activities, click the Editor tab to edit the main flow.

Editing the name of an activity in the canvas

After adding an activity to your flow, you can edit the name by clicking the activity name at the bottom of figure. Then, press Enter to confirm your input.

Editing the properties of an activity using the Properties dialog

An activity has properties such as attributes, inputs and controls you might want to edit. Click the Properties link on the toolbar to display the Properties dialog. All properties of the selected activity are shown in the Properties dialog.

Editing the properties of a flow

Flows have properties such as a name, expression language, persist policy and namespace that you might want to edit. Click the blank space of the canvas to make sure no activity is selected. Then click the Properties link on the toolbar to display the Properties dialog. All properties of the flow are shown in the Properties dialog.

Removing an activity from the flow

To remove an activity from your flow, click the Close button () at the right of the operation toolbar for the activity.

Adding and editing the inputs of an activity

Some of the activities have an input list for the activity to get a variable or receive input from another activity. To create an input, use the following steps:

1. Click the Add more inputs link on the input list in the Properties dialog.
2. To remove it, click the Remove icon ().

Working with links

The following tasks can be performed with links.

Adding a control link between activities

In the tooling, you can express a control link between activities by wiring the activities together. To do this, use the following steps:

1. Hover over the activity to see the pin icon () on the right of activity.
2. Drag the icon to the activity to which you want to link. A line is drawn on the canvas. Drop the line onto the target activity and release. A link is shown between the two activities.
3. To edit the properties of the control link, click the Property icon () on the link to display the Properties dialog. You can edit the condition and the error attributes of the control link.

See the Activity Links information about links between activities.

Removing a link

Use the following steps to remove a link:

1. Click the link. The line turns red and the remove icon is displayed.
2. Click the remove icon () to remove the link and the related input.