Batch Process Step

Batch Process Steps define what a Batch Process does.

A Batch Process Step defines an activity to be performed as part of a Batch Process.

About

Batch Process Steps are objects within a Batch Process that are assigned an Activity which is a type of processing to be executed on all or a portion of a Batch. Activities generally fall into one of two categories of activity types:

• Attended
• Unattended

Attended activities, such as Review, are completed by human reviewers and are assigned via review queues. Unattended activities, such as IP processing, Recognize, and Classification, are completed by Activity Processing Services and are assigned via Processing Queues. Batch Process Steps also allow for unit testing of their configured activity on the Design page via their respective “Activity Tester” tab.

As a Batch Process progresses through its individual steps, each step creates a series of Tasks that are submitted to either the designated Processing Queue or Review Queue. Once the Activity Processors or human reviewers pick up and complete all tasks from their respective queues for an individual step, the Batch Process moves to the next step. Batch Processes will not submit tasks for a step before all tasks from the previous step have been completed.

Batch Process Steps are added to Batch Processes in a top-to-bottom linear fashion, although they may be re-ordered at any time. As such, the execution of these steps is also done in a linear fashion, from top to bottom. The only exception to this is if a Batch Process Step is configured with a "Should Submit" expression. These are simple expressions written on Batch Process Steps that determine whether the activity of the step should be executed, and upon completion what the next step in the Batch Process should be. "Should Submit Expressions" can send the contents of the Batch being processed to any Batch Process Step in any (published) Batch Process, including entirely different Batch Processes, and are powerful tools for configuring workflows for exception queues, requesting additional review, or several other functions.

Scope

The "scope" of an Activity is an important topic to understand. As such, please visit the article on the topic of Scope to get a full understanding of the issue.