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Item Types

An item type is a classification of the components that make up a workflow process. You must associate any component that you create for a process, such as a function activity or a message, with a particular item type. Often times it makes sense to define an item type so that it describes the item being managed by your workflow process. For example, a purchase order requisition can be an item type while a purchase order requisition identified by a particular ID number is an item of that item type. See: To Create an Item Type.

Item Type Attributes

An item type attribute is a property associated with a given item type. It acts as a global variable that can be referred or updated by any activity within a process. An item type attribute often provides information about an item that is necessary for the workflow process to properly manage the item. For example, the "Workflow Demonstration" item type has an item type attribute called "Requisition Amount." An activity in our example Requisition Approval process requires the value of this item type attribute to determine if a selected approver has the authority to approve a requisition of that amount.

Applications as well as function activities can reference and set item type attributes using the Oracle Workflow Engine APIs. You can define and maintain as many item type attributes as necessary for an item type. You should define as an item type attribute, any information that will be required by an activity in your process, or any information that will need to be sent in a notification message. See: To Define a Message Attribute.

Attribute Types

There are nine types of attributes, as shown below. The type determines what values are acceptable and how the attribute is used.

Text The attribute value is a string of text.
Number The attribute is a number with the optional format mask you specify.
Date The attribute value is a date with the optional format mask you specify.
Lookup The attribute value is one of the lookup code values in a specified lookup type.
Form The attribute value is the Oracle Applications internal function name of a form and any optional form parameters. This attribute type is not relevant for the standalone version of Oracle Workflow. It is useful only if you have the Oracle Applications Notifications Viewer form.
The value must be entered using the following format:
function_name:parameter1=value1 parameter2=value2 ... parameterN=valueN
valueN can be a text string, enclosed in quotes (" ") or can be token substituted with another predefined item type attribute in any of the following ways:

A form attribute is passed to the Notification Viewer window to let a user drill down to the form to complete an activity or to see additional information related to the activity. See: Overview of Menus and Function Security, Oracle Applications Developer's Guide.
URL The attribute value is a Universal Resource Locator (URL) to a network location that a user can access when viewing notifications from the Notifications Web page. The user can complete an activity or see additional information related to the activity by accessing that URL.
Document The attribute value is an attached document. You specify the name of the document management system and a document reference. In the future, you can specify any of the following document types in the default value field:

Attention: Only the PL/SQL document type is currently supported.

Role The attribute value is a role name. You must initially load the roles from the database to display a list of roles to choose from. See: Roles.
Attribute The attribute value is the name of another existing item type attribute that you want to maintain references to in a process.

Item Type Selector Function

If your item type has or will have more than one process activity associated with it, define a PL/SQL function that will determine which process activity to run in a particular situation. For example, you may have two different requisition approval process activities associated with the same item type. The process that Oracle Workflow executes may vary depending on how and where the requisition originates. Your selector function would determine which process would be appropriate in any situation.

You can also extend the Selector function to be a general callback function so that item type context information can be reset as needed during the execution of a process. See: Standard API for an Item Type Selector or Callback Function.

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