Overview

This page provides guidance on how to use the Start Process Smart Service to initiate processes in your process models, interfaces, and web APIs. Processes initiated using this smart service are run asynchronously, meaning that the current process flow will continue without waiting for these processes to complete.

Learn more about other ways to start a process, and how they compare to this smart service, here.

Permissions needed

The behavior of the node depends on the permissions of the user running the smart service. The following table details the result of running the smart service given different permission levels.

Properties

• Category: Process Management

• Icon:

• Assignment Options: Unattended/Attended - Note: When this smart service is attended, the form that the user sees is the form configured on the node, not the start form for the specified process model.

Configuration options

This section contains tab configuration details specific to this smart service. For more information about common configurations see the Process Node Properties page.

Data tab

Node inputs

The Process Parameters property is a dictionary where the keys are process parameter names and the values are parmeters' values. If any required parameters are missing or if the dictionary contains any entries that do not match parameters of the selected process model, the process will not start.

For example, if you have a process model that controls an employee review cycle, it might have a required parameter named employeeId and optional parameters named deadline and reasonCode.

To successfully start this process, the Process Parameters input would look like one of the following:

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{
    employeeId: 12345
}

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{
    employeeId: 12345,
    deadline: today()+30
}

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{
    employeeId: 12345,
    deadline: today()+30,
    reasonCode: "ANNUAL"
}

In the following examples, the process would not start. For the first two cases, the reason is that the required process model parameter, employeeId, was not provided. For the third case the reason is that an entry in the Process Parameters input, supervisorId, did not match any of the parameters of the process model.

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{
    
}

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{
    deadline: today()+30
}

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{
    employeeId: 12345,
    supervisorId: 6789
}

Node outputs

a!startProcess()

The Start Process smart service is available as an expression function that can be executed inside a saveInto on a Interface Component or as part of a Web API. To learn more about using this function in interfaces, see Starting Processes From an Interface.

Syntax

a!startProcess( processModel, processParameters, onSuccess, onError )

Parameters

Leveraging activity-chaining

This smart service follows activity-chaining, completing only when the activity chain is complete or broken. The smart service then returns the process variables as of the completion of activity chaining through the processInfo.pv output. This means that the Start Process smart service can be used to complete multiple smart services and retrieve the results of the smart services from within an interface or web API. This can be a very powerful tool. Nonetheless, consider the following notes when using activity-chaining in conjunction with the Start Process smart service to ensure you use the smart service properly:

• The smart service may take a long time to complete if you have activity-chaining from the start node in your target process model. Ensure that only nodes whose execution is critical to your original process or form should be included in the initial chain on the target process. Per documentation on configuring activity-chaining, long activity chains are strongly discouraged.
• If a chained flow encounters an attended activity, the activity will be assigned to the user that the Start Process smart service was run as, but it will not open the associated form.
• The "onError" parameter will only evaluate if the process fails to start. It will not evaluate if a node in the started process pauses by exception.

Feature compatibility