Using the result of a previous step

You can configure a step in a process definition to perform an action on the result of a previous step. This supports processes where an item is created in one step and then you want to perform one or more actions on this newly created item.

Currently, this configuration is only supported for processes that use a File Group Process Step with the Clone File Group action. This is the only step type that officially creates a new item in Axiom Capital Tracking. Although you can use other process steps to direct step owners to create any kind of item, the creation is not an official step action and is not tracked by the process.

The typical use case for this configuration is for a rollover process. For example:

• Step 1 uses the Clone File Group action to create a new file group for the new cycle of planning.
• Step 2 creates the plan files for the new file group that was created in Step 1.
• Step 3 processes the plan files for the new file group that was created in Step 1.

For Step 1, you would point the step to an existing file group such as Budget 2020. When the process is activated, the step owner performs the cloning process, and creates a new file group such as Budget 2021. However when setting up the process definition, you cannot point Step 2 to the Budget 2021 file group because it is not created yet. Instead, you configure Steps 2 and 3 to use the result of Step 1.

Configuring a step to use the result of a previous step

When defining a File Group Process step, do the following to use the result of a previous step:

1. For File Group Source, select Previous Process Step.

2. For Selected Process Step, click the Browse button to select the step where the file group is created.

   

   The Select Process step dialog displays a list of steps that are eligible for selection. If no steps are eligible, a message informs you of this. Only steps that meet the following criteria are eligible for selection:

   • Must precede the current step.
   • Must create a file group using the Clone File Group action.

To continue the previous example, the configuration for Step 2 looks like the following:

This means that Step 2 creates plan files for the file group created in Step 1.

Tracking the step result in active processes

If a process is configured to use the result of a previous step, then the result of that step must be tracked within the process. To continue the previous example, when Step 1 is completed, the process needs to know the name of the file group that was created so that it can pass the name of that file group to Steps 2 and 3.

When a step owner completes a step where the created file group is used by a subsequent step, then as part of the completion process, they must specify the name of the file group that is created. If only one clone is created for the source file group since the process was activated, that file group is selected by default as the step result. Otherwise, the step owner is prompted to select a file group before the step completion dialog displays.

If the displayed step result is incorrect, the step owner can use the Select button to change the file group before completing the step. The list of available file groups is limited to those that were created by cloning the source file group.

The file group specified as the step result is passed to the subsequent steps that use that result. The step result is also documented in the process details for future reference.