About External Data Sources
Workflow Manager 2020
In a workflow template, you define the information that you want to gather when a workflow request is submitted by creating data groups containing one or more data elements. Each data group is displayed as a screen of questions, where the data elements define the questions. In some cases, you may want to limit the workflow consumer to choose one item from a list of options. One way to populate such a list is to connect to an external database, and you would do this by completing the following steps:
| • | Define a connection to an external data source (see |
| • | Create a new data item for a template with type DB Driven Type, and configure it to return data from your chosen data source (see |
Once such an element is defined, it will be displayed as a non-editable text field with a Click to Select hyperlink.
Database-Driven Data Element Displayed in a Workflow Request
When you click the hyperlink, the SQL query that was supplied to the workflow template for this data item will run on your external database, and the data it returns will be displayed in a new Database Record List window.
Choose one item from the list and click Select. The value of the column defined as the Persisted Column in the workflow template definition is displayed in the text field.
See Also