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concurrent approval Dynamically

ProfessorX

I want to do what the concurrent_approval.wft does but Dynamically when the workflow has already started.

I'm think a cgi task in the WF woulld emit a multi dropdown listbox where the user selects which users will review the file(s) concurrently. Unlike the out of the box concurrent_approval.wft the difference is that the 2nd task (Approval Chain) would happen Dynamically after the user selection.

Is this possible?

Do i just all the iw->addtask or iw->create task or whatever.

Please provide a snipet of code or if you like the whole thing

Thanks in advance!
WIN2K TS/TST 5.5.2 sp5; OD 5.6.0.1; DD 5.5.2
The Professor-

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Adam Stoller

If the number of reviewers is fixed and only the identify of the reviewers is variable - then yes - you can do this with a cgitask which, after selecting the users, uses TeamSite::WFtask methods to [re]set the owners of the review tasks to which they are assigned.

If the number of reviewers is variable too - you can use a similar approach, but the cgitask would need to lead into some form of nested workflow where you use the information from the parent to *generate* the number of review tasks and assign their owners.

--fish
Senior Consultant, Quotient Inc.
http://www.quotient-inc.com

iwovGraduate

Yes it is possible.

Sorry, don't have any code at the moment but this should not be difficult. If you search devnet and/or KB you can get references on changing the owner of a task after the workflow has been instantiated.

When you say dynamic in concurrent approval, do you want to dynamically change the owner of one of the two concurrent tasks ? Seems a little strange as it would not really be concurrent approval if you are changing the owner of one concurrent task based on input from another concurrent task.

ProfessorX

In it's simplest forms
I don't necessary want to change owners but set the tasks.

My Master Editor will not know who the reviewers will be until he sees the content.

For the review of French content there is 3 reviewers...a,b, & c
For the review of Spanish content there is 2 reviewers...e & f
For the review of German content there is 1 reviewer...g
For the review of Polish content there is 4 reviewers...h,i,j & k
this can go ad infinitum

Goti's got it but this can't be done with out nested workflows huh?

Thanks in advance!
WIN2K TS/TST 5.5.2 sp5; OD 5.6.0.1; DD 5.5.2
The Professor-

Migrateduser

So, the task order would go something like this, right?


                    |----- Concurrent Reviewer 1
Editor Task ------->|----- Concurrent Reviewer 2
                    |----- Concurrent Reviewer 3
                    |----- Concurrent Reviewer 4

And there could be 1 to 4 concurrent reviewers depending on which way the Editor transitions the task. Why not just have 4 approval paths. Editor chooses "Review French Content" and it goes to 3 concurrent reviewers. Editor chooses "Review Spanish Content" and it goes to 2 reviewers. A majority of the reviewer tasks won't get executed in each workflow, but it's an easy, non-dynamic way to create this workflow.

If this won't work due to the number of options the editor will have, then I think embedded workflows would probably be the right course to take. Anything else gets messy and is hard to maintain if/when you add more choices.

- Jason

ProfessorX

If I'm following you right Jason lets do 4 users tasks.

So I create the 4 user review tasks upfront.

What do I call, in the Master Editors CGI task to transtion to the task that i want to go to?

and in the follow up what do i call to change the users of those taks?

Thanks in advance!
WIN2K TS/TST 5.5.2 sp5; OD 5.6.0.1; DD 5.5.2
The Professor-

nipper

This actually should fit well into a single nested task. The Master decides what is to happen & then starts the task.

Otherwise you would need to do the following (which I do before a 552 WF starts, not dynamically - do not know if
you can): be able to change the reviewer assigned to it (worst case you could assign to everyone but only email
the appropraite person) and then change the timeout of unneeded tasks to 0 (bypassing them)

As much as I dislike nested WFs that is probably your best choice.

me

iwovGraduate

.. and in the follow up what do i call to change the users of those taks?

You mean change the owner of the task, right ?

For a start, see:
KB #2132: How to change the owner of a task once a workflow is instantiated
KB # 48492: How to Change the Owner of an Active Grouptask

Migrateduser

My suggestion is a little more straight-forward than that. No changing of ownerships or anything like that. Although that might be another option if you do it in a way that's maintainable as more reviewers need to be added.

Further explanation of my first suggestion:


                                    Editor Task
                                         |
                  |-------------|--------------|--------------|
               Spanish        French         German         Polish
                  |             |              |              |
        |---------|       |-----|-----|        |              |-----|-----|------|
    SpRev1  SpRev2   FrRev1  FrRev2  FrRev3   GeRev1     PoRev1  PoRev2  PoRev3  PoRev4

The first set of languages is the transition choice made by the Editor. After the Reviewers have concurrently completed their tasks, then you could transition back to a common (used in every workflow) set of tasks. This probably requires the least amount of coding and is not at all dynamic, but would serve its purpose.

The second alternative is to have a transition from the Editor task to an external task which has the job of changing ownership of the subsequent reviewer tasks. The problem here is that you have a variable number of reviewer tasks. However, you could setup your workflow with the maximum number of reviewer tasks you'll ever need, then have the external task transition any reviewer tasks that are not going to be used in a particular job. In other words, if there are 5 reviewer tasks defined in the workflow and the editor transitions for a Spanish Review, then you'll only want 2 review tasks. The external task will set the owners of the first 2 review tasks and transition the other 3. You could probably setup the external task to use some sort of database or cleanly formatted text file for input so that it's easy to add/remove reviewers, languages, etc.

The third (which Ghoti suggested) is to just use nested workflows. Having never used nested workflows and having heard about performance issues with nested workflows, I personally would leave that as a last resort.

Let me know if you need any clarification.

- Jason

ProfessorX

What do I call to transitions those dummy(zombie) users tasks and how do I know which one they are?

Thanks in advance!
WIN2K TS/TST 5.5.2 sp5; OD 5.6.0.1; DD 5.5.2
The Professor-

ts_user

ProfessorX,

We are planning to implement something similar to what you just described. The person sending it for approval will be provided a CGI page with dropdown list of approvers to choose. Once selected, the person will be notified and also the ownership of the approval task will be set to this user. In your case, If you do not know how many approvers will be selected, then you can have the maximum number of approver tasks when you start the workflow but depending on the number of approvers selected, the rest will be automatically approved.

Migrateduser

Having never used nested workflows and having heard about performance issues with nested workflows, I personally would leave that as a last resort.

What performance problems have you heard about with nested workflow? After creating a monster nested workflow, I never had any performance issues. Lots of other issues, but performance wasn't one of them.

Dave Smith
Sr. Software Engineer
Nike, Inc.
(503) 671-4238
DavidH.Smith@nike.com

nipper

>I never had any performance issues. Lots of other issues, but performance wasn't one of them.

Smitty has many issues.

There are a few things I do not like about nested WFs. The nested jobs hang out until the job is complete (should not be an
issue for you), the start nested job step (it is a pain), they are complex to write (cause you are basically using perl
to programmatically generate XML - that being said, same thing with a perl CGI) and harder to maintain (because of
previous statement).

Nested WFs are probably your best bet. I have seen people write nested WFs when you could do the job in without one,
which is why I dislike them at times).

me

Migrateduser

See, he didn't say anything about performance.

Dave Smith
Sr. Software Engineer
Nike, Inc.
(503) 671-4238
DavidH.Smith@nike.com

Migrateduser

Not sure I understand your question. If you're asking about the transition from the reviewer tasks to what ever comes next in the workflow, I guess that depends on your workflow model. My guess is that each reviewer would have the option to reject/approve the content. Not sure how your rejection/approval process works. If one person rejects, does that take it back to the editor task? Do you need a quorum one way or another to determine whether content is approved or rejected?

Also, you have to consider the possibility that the content is rejected back to the editor. The editor shouldn't have a choice to transition to any other language. So, in that case, you'll probably need an editor task per language which can only transition back to the same reviewers.

You're really designing some complex logic into this workflow. You may want to consider brining in a consultant to gather the requirements, diagram the flow, and design the logic.

I've attached a diagram of how I envision doing this without dynamic tasks.

- Jason

Migrateduser

Smitty,

I actually don't remember a lot of details around it. I just remember hearing that. It may just be related to having a lot of tasks in active jobs. I just know that whenever possible, unless it is obviously the best choice (which it hasn't been in my experience), I don't use nested workflows and instead find an alternative.

- Jason

nipper

>I actually don't remember a lot of details around it. I just remember hearing that. It may just be related to having a lot of tasks in active jobs

That is a problem, but probly not in this case. If you have a job that spawns several nested WFs, they hang out as zombies
after hey have completed, until the parent completes. Annoyed the heck out of me as one who does view all jobs as the admin.
Since we had several hundred jobs running, (many zombies) it was a performance issue. It sounds as if in this case the zombies
will not hang out long.

HTH

Andy

Migrateduser

I guess I think of performance as being speed related. Those phantom (you call them zombies) jobs are a royal pain, are utterly useless, and that was definitely one of the dumber implementations I've seen in the UI. So instead of a performance issue, I was thinking that one was more of a dumbness issue.

Dave Smith
Sr. Software Engineer
Nike, Inc.
(503) 671-4238
DavidH.Smith@nike.com

nipper

>I guess I think of performance as being speed related. Those phantom (you call them zombies) jobs are a royal pain, are utterly useless,
>and that was definitely one of the dumber implementations I've seen in the UI. So instead of a performance issue, I was thinking that one
>was more of a dumbness issue.

I also know there are performance issues when you get too many jobs. I assumed the phantom/zombie jobs count, maybe not.

They are certainly useless.

Migrateduser

It is possible that my static (non-dynamic) solution to this problem could be more of a performance issue than a dynamic solution, but probably less of a performance issue than using nested workflows. My guess is that the best solution would be to use dynamic tasks unless you're working in a very low-volume environment in which there are very few (less than 30 to 50) active jobs at one time. However, it is quite a bit trickier to code.

- Jason

nipper

>What do I call to transitions those dummy(zombie) users tasks and how do I know which one they are?

The zombies just hang out until the parent has completed. The zombies are most common when you have
multiple subtasks and some have completed while others have not.

Andy

ProfessorX

Not complex...

4 tasks are started and active.

I need to transition the 2 tasks from an external task. How do i do that?

Thanks in advance!
WIN2K TS/TST 5.5.2 sp5; OD 5.6.0.1; DD 5.5.2
The Professor-

Migrateduser

To be clear, these "zombie" tasks show up on your task list as endtasks that you can not act on - they just sit there doing nothing usefull until your parent job ends. They are simply useless clutter that confuses everyone who sees them.

Dave Smith
Sr. Software Engineer
Nike, Inc.
(503) 671-4238
DavidH.Smith@nike.com

nipper

>To be clear, these "zombie" tasks show up on your task list as endtasks that you can not act on - they just sit there doing nothing
>usefull until your parent job ends. They are simply useless clutter that confuses everyone who sees them.

We call them consultants here.

Not to be confused with a contractor (which I am )

ProfessorX

Well not actully, these these tasks must be called and completed.

The final task is waiting on them.

>The external task will set the owners of the first 2 review tasks and transition the other 3.

<activation>
<and>
<pred v='Reviewer 1'/>
<pred v='Reviewer 2'/>
<pred v='Reviewer 3'/>
<pred v='Reviewer 4'/>
</and>
</activation>

Thanks in advance!
WIN2K TS/TST 5.5.2 sp5; OD 5.6.0.1; DD 5.5.2
The Professor-