OpenExternal (Activity)

Open External
Name	OpenExternal
Purpose	Open an external document or executable file
Category	UBIK File Primitives
Returns	success of opening the file
Version	2.4+

The OpenExternal Activity opens an external document or executable file, also using optional arguments.

Arguments

Argument	Type	Direction	Purpose
FileName	Text	In	The path to the executable or the document file.
Arguments	Text	In	Additional arguments (optional, used to pass arguments for executable files).
WorkingDirectory	Text	In	Working directory (optional, used to specify a working directory for executable files). This value is only used in combination with executable files.
TimeOut	Integer	In	Time out value in seconds (optional, to wait for a maximum amount of time for the invoked process to finish). Leaving this value empty or setting it to 0 means that the workflow continues execution immediately, otherwise the specified amount of seconds will be spent waiting for the process to finish.
Result	Boolean	Out	true if process successfully finished, false if not

Usage

The activity is used to open file documents or executable files during the execution of a workflow. It can be used to open and show documents like Excel files, JPG pictures etc but also to execute a batch file if needed.

This activity does not automatically save changes. If you want to persist the newly created instance, you need i.e. a subsequent SaveObject activity!

Opening any (proprietary) document type requires that a corresponding software is available on the machine, for example Microsoft Office for an Excel document.

Examples

Open an Excel document

Show the Excel file E:\Results.xlsx:

Argument	Value
string	FileName	"E:\Results.xlsx"

Open image file with explicit application

Show the graphics image file E:\Graph.jpg with a certain image viewer application that allows to pass the additional command line argument "/clipcopy" which copies the loaded picture to the clipboard. Therefore, the needed arguments are simply separated by space characters, consisting of the image file path and the additional argument.

Argument	Value
string	FileName	""C:\Program Files (x86)\IrfanView\i_view32.exe""
string	Arguments	"E:\Graph.jpg /clipcopy"

Open image file with default application

Alternatively to the previous example, showing the image E:\Graph.jpg with it's system default application can simply be done by specifying it's document path as the file name.

Argument	Value
string	FileName	"E:\Graph.jpg"

Execute a batch file with command line arguments

Another use case could be executing batch files. We have a batch file E:\ProcessData.bat that processes the data of the text file MyData.csv in the working directory "E:\". If there is a problem we want to specify a timeout of 30 seconds for this processing step to avoid blocking the workflow for a long time.

This can be done by defining the following arguments:

Argument	Value
string	FileName	"E:\ProcessData.bat"
string	Arguments	"E:\MyData.csv"
string	WorkingDirectory	"E:\"
string	TimeOut	30