Quick Tip: How to connect a line back to the same activity
As most people would know, it's a pretty simple exercise in K2.net 2003 to draw a line back to the same activity. You just have to pick the "U" shaped line type and draw it directly.
This is pretty useful for cases where you want to do ad-hoc approval routing where the current approver can select another approver from a drop down list in the approving form. Effectively the line rule just checks if the field containing the next approver name is empty or not. If it is not empty, it will route back to the same client activity but with the selected user as the destination user.
Now, this can also be done with K2 blackpearl, but it isn't too obvious with the current line behavior. When dragging a outcome line from a client activity and then trying to drag it back to the same edge, you will notice that the line jumps around instead. This gets a bit annoying if you are expecting it to behave like K2.net 2003.
However, here's a quick tip for a sure fire way to get the loop back line drawn correctly (and nicely) each and every time.
- First move the start of the line to the left or right of the activity box. You need to see the hand icon appear before you can move the start of the line.
- Next click and hold down the mouse button after you select the end of the line (i.e. the part with the arrow head). Same as before, you need to see the hand icon appear before you can do this.
- Now just drag the arrow head back to the centre of the activity box.
Now once you have done this, you will notice that it drags a nice loop back from the side of the activity box back to the top of the activity box. You can try this a few times and the behaviour is always consistent.
Easy Peasy, right? :)