Microsoft WF activities
Description
Some activities from Microsoft are available out-of-the-box in Workflow definitions. These activities are listed in table below (links to Microsoft MSDN on-line help). There are more activities available in the Microsoft .Net framework but these are not listed in the default set up of Workflow designer.
For more help on how to add activities to activity toolbox, see Using the Workflow Designer.
Control Flow
| Icon | Activity | Description |
|---|---|---|
 | DoWhile | Looping activity that executes contained activities at least once, until a given condition is no longer true. |
 | ForEach<T> | Executes the contained activity once for each value in the provided collection. |
 | If | If-then-else control flow. |
 | Parallel | Executes all its contained activities asynchronously and simultaneously. Contained activities are not executed in different threads, each successive activity only executes when the previously scheduled activity completes or goes idle. If none of the activities goes idle the execution sequence is the same as in a Sequence activity. Therefore, always use some mixture of asynchronous activities and standard as contained activities in a Parallel activity. |
 | ParallellForEach<T> | Enumerates all elements of a collection and executes the contained activity for each element of the collection in parallell. |
 | Pick | Provides capability to build event-based flow control. It executes one of several activities in response to an event. |
 | PickBranch | A potential path of execution within a Pick activity. |
 | Sequence | Hold a block of activities that are executed in given sequence. |
 | Switch<T> | Selects one block of activities to execute based on the evaluated value of an expression. Evaluated value must be of type T. |
 | While | Executes contained activities while its loop condition evaluates to true. |
Error Handling
| Icon | Activity | Description |
|---|---|---|
 | Rethrow | Throws a caught exception from within a Catch part of a TryCatch activity. Must be used inside a catch. |
 | Throw | Throws an exception. |
 | TryCatch | Contains activities to be executed within an exception handling block. |
Flowchart
| Icon | Activity | Description |
|---|---|---|
 | Flowchart | Makes it possible to model workflow using the familiar flowchart paradigm. |
 | FlowDecision | Provides ability to model a conditional Node with two outcomes. Only available inside a Flowchart. |
 | FlowSwitch<T> | Provides ability to use switching with on expression and one outcome for each unique match. Only available inside a Flowchart. |
General
| Icon | Activity | Description |
|---|---|---|
 | AddToCollection<T> | Adds an item to a collection. |
 | ClearCollection<T> | Clear all items in a collection. |
 | ExistsInCollection<T> | Indicates whether an item is present in a collection. |
 | RemoveFromCollection<T> | Removes an item from a collection. |
Primitives
| Icon | Activity | Description |
|---|---|---|
 | Assign | Sets an argument or a variable to the result of an expression. |
 | Delay | Delays the execution by a specified amount of time. |
 | InvokeMethod | Calls a method of an object or a type. Method must be public. |
Runtime
| Icon | Activity | Description |
|---|---|---|
 | TerminateWorkflow | Terminates the Workflow instance and reports the Job as failed with error information. Once terminated, it cannot be resumed. |
Transaction
| Icon | Activity | Description |
|---|---|---|
 | CancellationScope | Associates cancellation logic, in the form of a Activity, with a main path of execution, also expressed as a Activity. |
 | CompensableActivity | An activity that supports compensation of its child activities. |
| Compensate | An activity used to explicitly invoke the compensation handler of a CompensableActivity. |
 | Confirm | An activity used to explicitly invoke the confirmation handler of a CompensableActivity. |