Choosing an Action Type

To help you decide when to use one of the several types of actions available in a workflow process, the actions are divided into four categories:

Row actions make it possible for changes to the rows storing information about an item. These actions are used to trigger code and to designate permissible user interaction, such as creating a new record and deleting a record. For details, see Controlling Row Changes.
State entry or exit actions occur immediately before or after a state or transition. For details, see Adding Entry and Exit Actions.
Transition actions occur when moving from one state to another. For details, see Adding Transition Actions.
Time-out actions automate changes based on the conditions you specify. For details, see Handling Connection Timeouts based on State.

In the following figure, you can see how the actions are related to a state:

The Action Types in Relation to the State, Activated

You can use the following table to determine which of the action types to use:

To execute script	Use	Friendly action name	Scope
When a row is inserted into the database⁽¹⁾	OnCreate	Create	State
When a row is deleted from the database⁽¹⁾	OnDelete	Delete	State
When a row is updated in the database⁽¹⁾	OnChange	Edit	State
When the state is entered	OnEnter	Enter	State
When the state is exited	OnExit	Exit	State
Between states	OnTransition	Transition	Transition
That specifies a condition for an automatic change in state	OnTimeout	Timeout	State and Transition

1 Inserts, deletes, and updates are not permitted unless you add the action. Script is not required, but the declaration of the action is.