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Common Activity Features

Overview​

Most workflow activities share a common set of execution and configuration capabilities.

These features provide consistent behavior across activities and help simplify workflow design, execution control, and error handling.

Depending on the activity type, some features may not be available.

Execution Control​

Execution Control determines how an activity behaves when multiple incoming execution paths converge.

This behavior is controlled through the Wait All Incoming setting.

Execution Control is commonly used when workflows contain parallel branches, conditional paths, or multiple activities that converge into a single activity.

For more information, see:

Error Handling​

Workflow activities support configurable error-handling policies that determine how execution should respond when an activity encounters an error.

Supported strategies include:

  • Fault
  • Continue
  • Retry
  • Suspend
  • Inherit

Error-handling policies can be configured at both the workflow level and the activity level.

For more information, see:

Custom Error Handlers​

Many activities support Custom Error Handlers that allow activity-specific error processing logic to be implemented directly within the Agent Builder.

When enabled, a dedicated error execution path can be connected to an activity to perform actions such as:

  • Logging
  • Notifications
  • Incident creation
  • Recovery processing
  • Compensating actions

Custom Error Handlers provide access to detailed error information through the Error Handler category in the Data panel.

For more information, see:

Process Data Integration​

Activities support dynamic configuration through Process Data.

Inputs and properties can be bound to values from:

This allows workflows to dynamically adapt at runtime without requiring static configuration.

Activity Outputs​

Many activities expose output values that can be consumed by downstream activities.

Outputs become available through the Process Data panel and can be used for:

  • Conditional logic
  • Data transformation
  • Workflow routing
  • Integrations
  • Reporting

The available outputs depend on the activity type.

Output Persistence​

Output Persistence stores selected activity outputs when the workflow suspends so they can be restored on resume. Unlike model data and agent data, activity outputs are not persisted by default. Enable persistence at the workflow level, then use each activity's Advanced settings to exclude an entire activity or individual outputs. Large collections default to off.

For configuration steps, screenshots, and an explanation of how the settings work together, see Output Persistence.

Error Message output​

Activities based on the common activity framework can expose Error Message. In particular, when an activity is invoked as an AI tool, a caught execution failure can be returned through this field instead of a normal business result. Check the activity's result and error information before treating a tool call as successful.

For normal workflow execution, use On Error or the attached error path. Do not assume that an empty Error Message alone proves that a business operation succeeded. Activities such as HTTP Request also populate it with transport-specific errors.

Activity Context Menu​

Activities provide a context menu to simplify workflow design and maintenance.

Common options include:

  • Cut
  • Copy
  • Delete
  • Collapse
  • Expand
  • Add Error Handler (supported activities)

Some activities may provide additional options specific to their functionality.

Feature Availability​

Not every activity supports every common feature.

Examples include:

  • Some lightweight activities may not support Custom Error Handlers.
  • Some control-flow activities may expose simplified execution control behavior.
  • Available outputs vary by activity.

Refer to the documentation for the specific activity when feature availability differs from the standard behavior.

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