Start Subprocess action
info
What is it? A Start Subprocess action is an action that allows you to start a subprocess from another (parent) process.
Why is it important? Using subprocesses is a good way to split the complexity of your business flow into multiple, simple and reusable processes.
Configuring a Start Subprocess action
After you create a process designed to be used as a subprocess, you will need to start it from another (parent) process. To do this, you need to add a Start Subprocess action on a Task Node from the parent process.
The following properties must be configured:
Action Edit
- Name - used internally to make a distinction between different actions on nodes in the process. We recommend defining an action naming standard to be able to quickly find the process actions
- Order - if multiple actions are defined on the same node, the running order should be set using this option
- Timer expression - it can be used if a delay is required on that action. The format used for this is ISO 8601 duration format (for example, a delay of 30 seconds will be set up as
PT30S) - Action type - should be set to Start Subprocess
- Trigger type (options are Automatic/Manual) - choose if this action should be triggered automatically (when the process flow reaches this step) or manually (triggered by the user); in most use cases, this will be set to automatic
- Required type (options are Mandatory/Optional) - automatic actions can only be defined as mandatory. Manual actions can be defined as mandatory or optional
- Repeatable - should be checked if the action can be triggered multiple times
- Autorun Children - when this is switched on, the child actions (the ones defined as mandatory and automatic) will run immediately after the execution of the parent action is finalized
Back in steps
- Allow BACK on this action - back in process is a functionality that allows you to go back in a business process and redo a series of previous actions in the process. For more details, check Moving a token backwards in a process section.
Parameters
- Subprocess name - the name of the process that you want to start as a subprocess
- Exclude from current state - what fields do you want to exclude when copying the data from the parent process to the subprocess (by default all data fields are copied)
- Copy from current state - if a value is set here, it will overwrite the default behavior (of copying the whole data) with copying just the data that is specified
Advanced configuration
- Show Target Process - ID of the current process, to allow the subprocess to communicate with the parent process (which is the process where this action is configured)
Data to send
- Keys - are used when data is sent from the frontend via an action to validate the data (you can find more information in the User Task configuration section)
danger
Data to send option is configurable only when the action trigger type is Manual.
Example
To start a subprocess, we can, for example, create the following minimum configuration:
- Subprocess name -
subprocessDemoProcess- name of the process that we want to start as a subprocess - Exclude from current state -
["client"]- copy all the data from the parent, except the client data - Copy from current state - we leave this field empty in order to copy all the data (except the keys that are specified in the Exclude from current state field)
Advanced configuration
- Target process (parentProcessInstanceId) -
${processInstanceId}**** - current process ID
