Finalizing your Process
Frends Processes mainly consist of Tasks, Subprocesses and the logic in between, however, there are some additional things one needs to consider before saving and using the Process.
Process settings
Every Process has its settings, which include the Process name, version, description and some additional things as shown in the screenshot below:
Let's dive into each of the settings one by one:
Name: This is the display name for the Process and it should be descriptive of what the Process is doing.
Major and minor version: These fields can be used to set the current versions of your Process. It is usually beneficial to follow some convention, e.g. minor version increases are non-breaking and major increases can potentially be not backwards compatible. However, Frends does not dictate any versioning scheme, and you are free to choose the way you version your Processes.
Build number: This is incremented automatically when changes are made, and it cannot be reset.
Description: Here one can write an extended explanation for the Process and possibly include some external links or any other necessary information.
Subprocess to call on unhandled error: Here one can choose a Subprocess that will be executed every time an unhandled error happens in the Process. An unhandled error means that an error is not processed by any "catch" Elements. It is good practice to have a generic Subprocess for error handling that helps standardize how errors are handled across all Processes (e.g. such a Process could create a support ticket and send notifications to an operator).
Graph controls: These are mostly for exporting and importing data.
Import BPMN: Allows importing BPMN files into a Process if one uses external Process modelling software.
Export BPMN: Allows exporting BPMN files from Frends, e.g. for use in external Process modelling software.
Save as picture: Allows exporting an image of the whole Process. Useful for presentations and external documentation.
Target framework: Allows choosing the .NET framework version to use for the Process. In most cases, the default value is fine, but sometimes you want to specifically target e.g. .NET Standard for the Process to be cross-platform and compatible with Linux Agents. Note that changing this setting can affect the Tasks available in the Process, as some Tasks target specific frameworks and not others. For example, if a Task is Windows-specific and thus targets only .NET Framework 4.x, then you will not be able to use it in a cross-platform setting.
The next article is Example on Building and Deploying your Process