Actions are the fundamental components of any integration project. You will define and combine actions into workflow activities, then deploy them to a server for execution. However before working with actions there are tasks an administrator must attend to, summarized below. See also the topics Installation, System prerequisites, Operating prerequisites, Data prerequisites.
Create users: Your first task in a new system is to set users up with login and privilege details. The system is shipped with a "Super user" set up with administrative privileges and this user's details will be used to enter further users of the system. It is important you do this at once, to ensure security of your system. See Users overview, New user and User properties.
Configure hosts: If you are using the system to run on your local server, i.e. you do not need to copy any of the system activities to outside servers, then you do not need to do this step. The application will automatically create a server corresponding to your local host. However to deploy actions and activities to another server, the properties for each of these hosts running the application will need to be setup. This can be done prior to developing your projects, step 3 below, or you can wait and set up the host records later. To create host records choose New host, by selecting Hosts on the Explorer tree then using either the right click menu or New icon on the taskbar. This lets you enter the properties of each host, see Host overview, New host, Host properties.
Create projects: You are now ready to set up projects which will group your integration tasks into logical units. Each project holds the appropriate resources, i.e. the actions, data sources, and workflow activities associated with this particular business integration task. Remember resources can be shared within and between projects, for example only one copy of a data source need be kept with a project, even if it is used in more than one action or activity. See Projects overview, New project, and Project properties.
Create actions, define data sources: Having completed steps 1 - 3 above, you are now ready to define the integration resources for your projects. This involves creating actions almost certainly including data transfer actions. These in turn will involve defining the source and target data sources that underlie the transformation, as well as the mappings between them. See Working with actions, New action, Data transfers overview, Transaction overview, Data source overview
Build and test activities: Actions will almost invariably be incorporated into the complexes or workflows known as activities, which typically represent a single business process. Activities allow actions to be controlled during runtime for example allowing roll-back in the case of error for "transactable" activities, error branching, conditions as well as rules and content based decisions to be applied, see Activities overview, Design activity workflows, Working with actions.
Deploy to host: Once the activity is fully tested and debugged, deployment to a production server is straightforward. Either drag and drop, or copy and paste, the resources required from the project to the required host see Drag, copy or paste. In fact when you copy an action or activity to a host, it is a shortcut paste rather than a replication of the action, so be aware that changes you make to an action on the host also change this action on the project and vice versa. See Deploy project.
Set up event monitors: By creating an event monitor for the activity such as a file arrival listener or an email listener, the system will now feed incoming data to the activity. Events can be set with the action in a project, and are copied automatically with the action when it is copied to a host for deployment, see Event overview, Event monitor overview.
Related topics include Concepts overview, Actions overview, Working with actions, Deploy project