AX1241

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 is intended to support 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. 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 2021. When the process is activated, the step owner would perform the cloning process and create a new file group such as Budget 2022. However when setting up the process definition, you can't point Step 2 to the Budget 2022 file group because it isn't created yet. Instead, you would 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 example in the previous section, the configuration for Step 2 will look like the following:

This means that Step 2 will create plan files for the file group that was 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 was created.

This selected file group is then associated with the step. In the Process Action dialog, it is displayed as the Step Result. If needed, you can change the selected file group here before completing the step, by clicking Select. However, once the step has been completed, the step result is then fixed and cannot be changed without reopening the step.

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