Actions and action types
Actions are the mechanism for submitting new records to the database, moving records from one state to another, and modifying or deleting records.
When users click the Actions button on a form or opening the Actions menu on the tool bar, a list of valid actions is displayed, and the default action is highlighted in bold text. You define the default action by using the Default Action tab in the State Properties window. See Default actions. You can also call a default action from a hook.
Only the actions that are available at that moment, based on the user's permissions and the state of the record, are displayed. To avoid potential performance problems, access control hooks do not run when calculating valid actions.
You can define an action to perform these tasks:
- Create a new record and add it to the database.
- Modify information in the record. (The behaviors associated with each field can also limit access to particular fields of the record.)
- Move a record from one state to another.
- Mark one record as a duplicate of another.
- Execute a hook. Action hooks can handle access control, initialization, validation, and notification. See Customizing actions by adding hooks.
- Delete a record from the database.
You can control which users have access to which actions and when actions can be performed.
A number of predefined action types for commonly used actions are supported, for example, the Submit action and the Change State action. See Supported action types.
In the Designer, each record type has an Actions grid that defines the actions available for records of that type. You can use the Actions grid to add, modify, and delete actions and to create state transitions.
Supported action types
HCL Compass software supports the following types of actions:
- Action type
- Description
- Base
- A Base action is a secondary action that runs as a result of every
other action. You can write one action hook for a Base action, but
use that hook with multiple actions. Each time an action fires, the
Base action verifies that the hook criterion is met; if it is, the
base action completes its process. For example, you can add a Notification
action hook to a Base action to have the Base action send e-mail notification
when a Close action (a Change_state action type that moves the record
to the Closed state) occurs. Base actions do not appear in the list
of actions in the HCL Compass client.
Setting access control on Base actions affects all actions in the schema. You can modify the access control to actions, including actions that might be added to your schema by applying packages. However, any access control restrictions placed in Base actions apply to all other actions.
- Change_state
- Change_state actions are available only for state-based record types. A Change_state action moves a record from a source state to a destination state. A Change_state action can reference many source states, but only one destination state. Change_state actions appear in the list of actions in the HCL Compass client only if the current record is one of the source states.
- Delete
- The Delete action permits users delete a record from the database. Delete actions appear in the list of actions in the HCL Compass client.
- Duplicate
- The Duplicate action is available only for state-based record types. This action links the record to another record that contains similar information. Duplicate actions appear in the list of actions in the HCL Compass client only if the current record is one of the source states.
- Hide
- The Hide action enables the schema designer to hide actions that the user does not have permission to perform because of an action access control hook.
- Import
- The Import action imports records from another source. The contents of imported records are validated as part of this action, but field-level validation is not performed. In addition, when a set of state-based records is imported, these records are assigned to a state specified in the data files without any verification of whether they could have transitioned to that state. Import actions do not appear in the list of actions in the HCL Compass client.
- Modify
- The Modify action permits users modify field values in a record without moving the record between states. Modify actions appear in the list of actions in the HCL Compass client.
- Record_script_alias
- Record_script_alias associates an action name with a record script. This allows the
record_script_alias actions to appear in the list of actions in the client. However,
record_script_alias actions are not entity actions because they are not part of the record
types states and do not automatically work with an entity - their behavior is determined by
the way the record script alias is coded. As a result, Record_script_alias actions are not
part of the valid parameters for the entity functions such as
GetActionNameandGetActionTypeor any other function that works with entity actions. - Submit
- The Submit action enters a new record into the HCL Compass user database. For state-based records, this action assigns a destination state, but does not require a source. Each record type can have only one action whose type is Submit.
- Unduplicate
- The Unduplicate action is available for state-based record types. This action removes the link between duplicate records.
Creating a state transition
The HCL Compass schema developer defines the rules for how users move records between states. State transitions are implemented by actions. To create a state transition, you define an action of the type CHANGE_STATE and then select the source states and a destination state for that action.
Customizing actions by adding hooks
You can add action hooks that implement tasks at key points in the life cycle of an active record. For example, by default, all users have access to every action. You can limit the access to an action by using an access-control hook.
Several action hooks are supported: Access Control, Initialization, Validation, Commit, and Notification.
For a description of action hooks and information about how they work with field hooks, see Using hooks to customize your workflow. To learn how to create an access control action hook, see Action access control hook example. Also see Scripting languages and Action access control.
Default actions
You can define default actions for states. A default action for a state appears in bold on the Actions menu in theHCL Compass client.
Default actions are useful for guiding users through the state model. They are required for certain schemas and packages, such as the UCM schema and package. If you use the UCM schema or package, the default actions of your states must provide a valid path through the state type model. For more information, see Adding an UCM integration. Also, default actions can be called from hook code.
Before you can define the default action for a state, you must first create a state transition.
Deleting an action
Deleting an action might require other changes to a schema. For example, if you delete a CHANGE_STATE action, you might need to modify the State Transition Matrix to compensate for the lost action. If you have referred to a deleted action in a script, you must modify your script to delete any references to the action.