Application Engine process action

A process might be designed, for example, to copy one area of an OLAP cube to another cube. Or, it might perform a mathematical function on two values. All processes that have been published are available in the Name input of the action. Processes have parameters, which are inputs of the action. Specify a value for each parameter.

You can specify an Application Engine process action on these objects:

• Cells
• Buttons
• List Views
• Reports

Application Engine processes can be complex and take several minutes to run. In the Execution mode input, you can specify whether a process runs synchronously or asynchronously. In asynchronous mode, users can continue to work in Application Studio without waiting for the process to finish. Thus, use asynchronous mode for longer lasting processes where users do not require to see the progress of a process or wait for its completion.

In Asynchronous mode, the ID of the process is returned immediately to the report. The ID can be stored in a report variable, for example, by specifying the variable as a parameter and =Actions.Result.Text as its value.

The ID can be used, with the Application Engine functions AsyncGetProcessStatus and AsyncGetProcessResult, to report on the status and result of an asynchronous process.

These inputs and options are available only if the execution mode of the action is Synchronous:

• Show progress
• Progress messages level
• Progress dialog title
• Progress dialog timestamp

You can specify that a progress dialog box is displayed while a process is running. Or you can specify that the dialog box is displayed only if there is an error, warning, or an information event. To help you to debug processes, you can display all available messages.

To display the progress dialog box, select Always as the value of the Show progress option and select a level for the Progress messages level input. Otherwise the dialog box is displayed only if an error occurs.

If you select Debug as the level, the progress of the process and all available messages are displayed. For other levels, the dialog box displays only the progress unless an event at the specified level occurs.

You can specify a formula as the value of the Show progress input, and of the Progress messages level input. This enables you to control these inputs from outside the Edit Action dialog box.

For the Show progress input, the formula must have one of these values as its result:

• Errors only
• Always

For the Progress messages level input, the formula must have one of these results:

• Error
• Warning
• Information
• Debug

To change the title of the progress dialog box, specify a user-defined string or a formula as the value of the Progress dialog title input.