How to Add a Control Flow Activity to a Workflow

Updated: May 13, 2016

Applies To: System Center 2012 SP1 - Service Manager, System Center 2012 R2 Service Manager, System Center 2012 - Service Manager

Use control flow activities to provide structure—branches, loops, or timer delays—for your workflow. The System Center 2012 – Service Manager Authoring Tool provides four built-in control flow activities:

• Delay Activity : Introduces a delay between activities in a workflow.

• For Each Loop Activity : Takes as an input an array (collection) of objects, and repeats the set of activities in the For Each Loop object in the collection.

• IfElse Activity : Controls the sequence of activities in a workflow based on a Boolean (True/False) condition.

• Parallel Activity : Forks the sequence of activities into two simultaneous sequences of activities.

To use a Delay activity, just drag the Delay activity into the workflow, and then set the activity’s TimeoutDuration property to the delay interval you want to use. To use an IfElse or Parallel activity, drag the activity into the workflow, and then drop regular activities into the IfElse or Parallel activity.

Using a For Each Loop activity resembles using an IfElse or Parallel activity; however, you might want to set additional properties for the activities in the For Each Loop. Use the following procedure to add a For Each Loop to a workflow.

To add a For Each Loop to a workflow

1. In the Management Pack Explorer, expand Workflows, right-click the workflow you want, and then click Edit. This opens the workflow in the authoring pane.

2. In the Activities Toolbox pane, locate the activity group Control Flow.

3. Drag the For Each Loop activity to a position between the Workflow Start and Workflow End icons or between two existing activities.

4. Add the activities for which you want to loop the execution to the Loop Container(ForEachChildActivity). To add each activity:

   1. In the Activities Toolbox pane, expand the activity group that contains the activity that you want to use.

   2. Drag the activity to a position to the top of the Loop Container activity. If the Loop Container activity already contains other activities, drag the new activity to a position before, after, or between the existing activities.

   3. Most workflow activities that you place in this container have two additional properties: Current Item and Property to Bind. For each activity within the loop container, set these properties as follows:

      Note

      
      Setting the properties is not mandatory, and it is useful only if you want to take the object from the Input Collection of the Loop Container.

      1. Set Current Item to the Current Item property of the Loop Container activity of the ForEach activity. Note that, if this activity is the first activity in the For Each Loop, Current Item is set automatically.

      2. Set the value of the Property to Bind property to the value of the property of the current activity that will use the Current Item value.

Adding or Removing Workflow Activities