Related information
Directed Web Access (DWA) allows anyone accessing the Internet, an intranet, or email to process an assignment, either on a one-time or infrequent, as-needed basis. This feature extends the scope and reach of your application to employees throughout the enterprise, trusted customers and suppliers, and anyone else from whom you want to obtain information.
Assignments define the parts of processing of a work item that requires human judgment, expertise, and data entry that are often completed by trained users of the application. Assignments sent to such outside parties are known as external assignments. They improve accountability, eliminate telephone calls, prevent the need for rework caused by answers from outsiders that do not pass edits, and give visibility to the responsiveness of these outside parties.
To list outstanding external assignments, select Designer Studio > Process and Rules > Tools > Work Admin > External Assignments.
To send the external assignment to someone, the application includes a specially formatted URL within the text of an email. When the email recipient clicks this URL, a web browser session starts and automatically submits a once-only identifier and password to your Pega 7 Platform server.
After authenticating these values, Pega 7 Platform sends an assignment to the user's browser. After a user completes and submits this form, the requestor connection ends. The external user cannot repeat the assignment or reuse the URL or password.
For security reasons, the URL for an external assignment must be static — not generated or altered by JavaScript or other processing at runtime. Because of this restriction, the flow action cannot use AJAX, dynamic select, or SmartPrompt, which require multiple server interactions.
External assignments are instances of the Assign-External class (or of a subclass). The standard activity Work-.External creates these assignments.
Ordinarily, each use of this facility counts as a web invocation in the reports prepared by the License Compliance facility. To see a chart of period-by-period counts of web invocations on your system, select Designer Studio > System > License > Web Invocations Chart.