Creating your first project
Use the Toolbox to add Activities to your Workflow. Use the Solution Explorer to manage Workflows, Projects and files.
To create a new project, click on the New Project… link on the start page.
It opens up the New Project dialog:
Option | How to use it | Notes |
|---|---|---|
Name | Name your first Project. | Once you named a Project, you cannot change its name. (An alternative is to create a new Project.) |
Location | Define the path to the folder that will hold all the contents of your Solution and its future Projects. | This folder will contain all your future Projects, Workflows, and Resources. Never store the Solutions and Projects into a subfolder of the |
Solution name | Name your Solution. It will serve as a parent container for all future Projects. | You will have only one Solution, and this name cannot be changed afterwards, so use a generic and future-proof name (e.g. name of your organization). |
Click OK when you are finished.
After that, a deployment dialog will appear. It is fine if you skip these settings for now. These will only be necessary when you are ready to deploy. Of course, if you already have these necessary details at hand, you can enter the access credentials for the server to where Workflow Studio should deploy the Workflows.
Explore the structure of your Solution
In Workflow Studio you can see how Workflows, Projects, files, and the Solution relate to each other: The Solution Explorer, a panel on the right side of the Workflow Studio window, reflects this relationship in a tree structure.
All your files have been created in the folder which was written in the New Project dialog’s Location field below a folder named after your solution name. This is important not only because you probably want a tidy file structure but because when this solution will be deployed only those files will be sent to the SmartBridge service which are in this folder. You can check this folder easily through the context menu of your solution (right click on the top most, bold texted solution node in the Solution Explorer) with the Open Folder in File Explorer menu item.
Creating a Workflow
Just right click on a project node and select the Add/New Workflow… menu item. It will bring up the Add New Item dialog with the TSB Workflow (by default this is the only item; see more in the How to reuse workflows section) selected. Give it a meaningful name and click Add. You’re done.
Adding activities to the Workflow
After opening your first Workflow the canvas of Workflow Studio will already contain one Activity, called Sequence. This is a special Activity. The Sequence Activity serves as a container for the Workflow you are going to build. I.e. when building a Workflow you will need to create a sequence of Activities inside the Sequence Activity.
To build a Workflow, you need the following:
- Make sure you have a Sequence Activity on the canvas.
- Make sure you have a panel called ‘Toolbox’ open.
Then, you can create a Workflow in the following way:
- The Toolbox contains a search field. Type a keyword in the search field to find relevant Activities.
- Drag the Activity that you need to the Sequence Activity, right below the arrow.
- Configure the settings that are exposed on the canvas.
- Optionally, configure additional settings using the Properties panel.
- Repeat step 1-4 until your Workflow is able to produce the required output.
Each activity is a unit of work. Each job will be done in the order they are placed, starting from the top of the Sequence. Of course, you can always rearrange the Activities. Note that the output of the preceding Activity serves as the input for the next one.
