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The Pentaho Action Sequence Editor is an Eclipse plugin which allows the user to create and edit action sequences within their Pentaho solutions. From within the Design studio let's quickly create a new action sequence and take a look at how it appears within the editor. Select the Default Project within the Package Explorer view on the left side of the Design Studio. From the toolbar at the top of the Design Studio select "New Action Sequence" from the Pentaho Toolbar Item. The Action Sequence Wizard should appear. From the Template pulldown select Sample Burst Action then select Finish. A new action sequence editor should open displaying the contents of the action sequence we just created. Now let's take a look at the various parts of the action sequence editor.
General Tab
As the name implies, the General tab is where the general information about the action sequence is managed. Stuff like the title, description, and icon that will appear for this action sequence when browsing your solution. Additionally you can indicate the logging level you would like to use for this action sequence. Logged messages will appear in the pentaho-bi-suite/jboss/server/default/log/server.log file. If you're having problems getting your action sequences working, the log file is a good place to look for clues as to what the problem might be.
Define Process Tab
Notice there three sections labeled "Process Inputs", "Process Actions" and "Process Outputs." Let's take a closer look at each.
Inputs
The Process Inputs section represents the "contract" this action sequence this with the outside world regarding information that will be needed for this action sequence to run. Inputs can come from the request (URL in most cases), the session or runtime. Resources are the files needed by the action sequence to complete its job. For example, if an action sequence is going to run a JFree report (which this one does), one of the resources would be the location of the JFree report definition file.