Categories

Start, Case, and Task Categories

A Start, Case, or Task can be assigned to a category. A category is a structured String (e.g. Finance/Invoices). It categorizes Starts, Cases, or Tasks into a hierarchical structure. It is an important identification attribute besides the name of a Start, Case, or Task.

The Category API allows getting localized information from the CMS. For example, the name of the category Finance/Invoices is stored in the CMS at /Categories/Finance/Invoices/name.

To display a tooltip or an icon for a category on start lists configure the tooltip and cssIcon in the CMS (i.e. /Categories/Finance/Invoice/cssIcon).

The following example shows a simple use of a category on the Case level. The API on the Task level is identical.

ivy.case.setCategoryPath("Finance/Invoices");

String categoryName = ivy.case.getCategory().getName(); // EN: "Invoices", DE: "Rechnungen"
String categoryPath = ivy.case.getCategory().getPath(); // EN: "Finance/Invoices", DE: "Finanzen/Rechnungen"

Tip

The project WorkflowDemos demonstrates the use of start, case, and task categorization. Typically the case category is used to categorize the overall process (i.e. Business Case) and the task category is used to categorize a single or set of unions of work. Because of the clear separation of the case and task categorization, even complex use cases can be handled.

An example: In a mid-sized company, the process to request an address change from a customer exists in multiple forms. There is one in the customer portal and one for partner agencies. The process executed from the customer portal has the case category ‘CustomerPortal/AddressChange’. The process executed by a partner agency has the case category ‘Partner/Customers/AddressChange’. Both processes have involved a task to validate the address. Finally, the address verification is done by the same department/user. So, in both cases, this task has the category ‘AddressVerification’. This allows the user to filter those tasks no matter where they have been created.