About Activities

Activities are the building blocks of a workflow. Each activity represents a unit of work. For example, there is an activity to set a map's extent, an activity to perform geocoding, and an activity to gather input from the user. In all, VertiGIS Studio Workflow provides over 200 activities for building workflows.

The Toolbox in VertiGIS Studio Workflow Designer lists the available activities. To build a workflow, you drag activities from the Toolbox onto the design surface and connect the activities into a flowchart. The completed flowchart represents the process that the workflow automates. Each activity is a step in the process.

Most activities have inputs—the values that the activity operates on—and outputs—the results of the activity's operations. When you add an activity to a workflow, you customize the activity by configuring the activity's inputs. The outputs are computed when the workflow runs.

VertiGIS Studio Workflow Designer, showing the Toolbox of activities and a flowchart built from the activities

When you create a new workflow, you choose the environment(s) the workflow will run in. The Toolbox is automatically filtered to show only those activities that work in your chosen environments. This prevents you from adding activities that don't work in your environments.

You can further filter the Toolbox by typing the name of an activity in the Filter box. As you type, the Toolbox updates to show the activities that match what you type. Filtering is an easy way to find a particular activity so you can add it to your workflow.

Activities fall into several broad categories: