Call External Action
Introduction
The Call external action activity allows you to call an external action that is defined by an OData service that your app consumes. You can pass parameters to the action and use its result.
Properties
There are two sets of properties for this activity, those in the properties pane on the right, and those that are displayed when opening the activity dialog. An example of call external action properties is represented in the image below:
The Action section of the properties pane shows the toolbox action associated with this activity. You can open a dialog box to select a different toolbox action clicking the ellipsis (…) next to Action.
You can open the Call External Action properties dialog by double-clicking the activity, or right-clicking the activity and selecting Properties.
The properties dialog box consists of two tabs:
General Tab
Action
The Action property, allows you to select the external action of the OData service that will be called. Click Select… to select an action from an OData service that you have consumed in your app.
If a parameter or the return value has an enumeration type which is not yet consumed in your app, you will be asked if it can be created.
If a parameter or the return value is an object or a list of an external entity type that is not yet part of your domain model, it will ask you to confirm that this external entity can be added to the domain model.
Click OK to confirm that you want to add the necessary external entities and enumerations to the module which the consumed OData service document is part of. Click Cancel to prevent the entities and enumerations being added – in this case the action will not be selected.
Parameters
In the table below the selected action, you will find the parameters that are defined by the external action, with their name, type, and the value passed to them.
Double-click a row in the table or select it and click Edit parameter value, to see the Edit External Action Parameter Mapping Dialog. Here you can edit the value that will be passed when calling the external action.
Output
The Output section shows what the action returns and allows you to rename it. You can use this value in the microflow, or choose not to use it.
If the action returns an entity that has associations, you can select the associations that you want to have populated in the resulting variable. You can then use the Retrieve activity to retrieve the associated objects over the association.
Documentation Tab
In the Documentation tab, you can find a Summary and a Description. These fields contain public documentation provided by the author of the service.
Edit External Action Parameter Mapping Dialog
The Edit External Action Parameter Mapping dialog allows you to set the value of the parameter you pass to an external action. You can either select a Variable from the dropdown field, or write a custom microflow expression that returns a value of the expected type.
Every parameter must have a value specified. When Can be empty is true, the selected variable or expression may evaluate to empty. When the value cannot be empty, the microflow will throw an error if the value evaluates to empty.
If you have selected a variable for an entity that has associations, you can select which associations you want to include in the arguments that you call the external action with.