Creating a state machine

This first recipe is to create a state machine for vehicle inspection. In Chapter 14, Workflow Development, we created a workflow task and an inspection status field. In this recipe, we will use a state machine to handle the inspection status change logic.

Getting ready

We need to have a table with a status field with an initial and final status, such as the InspStatus field we added to the ConWHSVehicleTable table in Chapter 14, Workflow Development.

How to do it...

To create a state machine, follow these steps:

1. Open ConWHSVehicleTable in the designer. Right-click on the State Machines node and choose New State machine.
2. Rename the new state machine InspStateMachine and complete the properties as shown in the following table, creating labels for the Description and Label properties:

Property	Value
Description	Use this to control the inspection status
Label	Inspection status
Data Field	InspStatus

3. Right-click on the new state machine definition and select New State.
4. Complete the properties...