Activity Pre-conditions

Edit activity pre conditions

To edit activity pre conditions, double click the activity shape and edit the pre conditions from the properties panel.

• Double click activity shape (1).
  Edit pre conditions (2).

Activity pre conditions are conditions that must be satisfied in order that this activity can be started on the ticket.  When moving from one activity to the next in a workflow, you will not be able to transition to an activity if it's pre conditions are not satisfied.  These conditions apply to the activity, regardless of how you are transitioning to the activity.  For example, if the activity is concerned with collating a knowledge base from questions sent in on tickets, you may want a pre condition that the ticket type is set to question.

You can define transition conditions separately which control whether a transition can occur (see Transition Conditions).

Double click the activity shape and then click the add (or edit if pre conditions already exist) button to edit the pre conditions for the activity.  See Editing Conditions for details of how to define conditions.

Advanced Models with Process Persisted Fields

When using advanced models, you can define process persisted fields (see Process Persisted Fields, Process State, Helper and Controlled Fields for details).  These are process fields with global scope so that their value is able to be read or updated anywhere in the workflow definition.  These process persisted fields can also be used when defining activity pre conditions.

An example might be for an employee onboarding process, where we are capturing the Confirmed Start Date as a process persisted field.  You may wish to prevent an activity from being able to start until this date has been supplied.

In the condition editor, the list of ticket fields available is augmented with a list of the Process Persisted Fields defined for the workflow.  They have a (P) suffix to show they are process persisted fields.

The precondition for the activity requires that the Confirmed Start Date process persisted field need to be present (i.e. it needs to have a value).