This section provides information on document templates. These document templates serve a dual-purpose and can be used in the following ways:
Template as a Traditional Template
The document template here will comprise fixed sections and variable fields. A typical process will involve finding a template, populating it and saving it to a particular location. This template can then be used or reused by multiple activities without continuously locating that document, every time the process runs. Other similar activities will use the same template, populate the variable fields, and run processes. Any updates, need to be made in the template only at its location.
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Example |
You may have an Excel document as a template which has sections such as First Name, Last Name, Employee ID and E-mail, which are fixed. The values in these fields are variable. Consider two processes A and B using this template. When process A starts, it populates the variable fields with the appropriate values. When process B starts, it uses the same template, but populates the fields with values specific to process B. |
Template as an Information Source
The document template can also be used as a reference from which processes can only read values. When a process starts, an activity looks up a particular field and uses the value available to run the process.
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Example |
You may have an Excel document on SharePoint that includes pricing information. When the process starts, it looks up the price of a product by using the Read Excel activity and the activity is configured to use the Excel file which is a document template. |
The following topics are addressed in this section:
