AND gateway next to the start event

Can we have an AND gateway next to the start event? Workflow doesnt get initiated if i link the start event to the AND gateway, Unknown Hopi error is thrown......Kindly help me to resolve the issue

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Adam Stoller

Can we have an AND gateway next to the start event? Workflow doesnt get initiated if i link the start event to the AND gateway, Unknown Hopi error is thrown......Kindly help me to resolve the issue

I'm not sure what you're doing in the WFM - but if you want to have multiple concurrent tasks operating at start it should work.

jbonifaci

I haven't played with this in a while, but I know I've had issues in the past with using gateways as the first object in a wfm.

What is it you are trying to do here that you think you need a gateway? There is likely another way it can be done.

~Jeff

Adam Stoller

I haven't played with this in a while, but I know I've had issues in the past with using gateways as the first object in a wfm.

What is it you are trying to do here that you think you need a gateway? There is likely another way it can be done.

~Jeff

Clearly the trivial way to accomplish this would be to have a single start task be an external task that does nothing but transition through an AND gateway to two or more tasks that you wanted to be start tasks - but if there's a problem getting that Start "object" to point through an AND gateway in WFM it should be reported as a bug to Support.

jbonifaci

Clearly the trivial way to accomplish this would be to have a single start task be an external task that does nothing but transition through an AND gateway to two or more tasks that you wanted to be start tasks - but if there's a problem getting that Start "object" to point through an AND gateway in WFM it should be reported as a bug to Support.

Yeah, that's what I've always done in the past, I just have a start external task that does nothing but transition itself to the gateway.

I didn't want to point that out to him though, as I wanted to see exactly what he was doing before suggesting it, as the gateway might not even be needed.

If all he's trying to do is call 2 tasks, he can just link to both from the start event, which is obviously better than creating a dummy task and a gateway to accomplish the same thing.

Adam Stoller

Yeah, that's what I've always done in the past, I just have a start external task that does nothing but transition itself to the gateway.

I didn't want to point that out to him though, as I wanted to see exactly what he was doing before suggesting it, as the gateway might not even be needed.

If all he's trying to do is call 2 tasks, he can just link to both from the start event, which is obviously better than creating a dummy task and a gateway to accomplish the same thing.

Hmm - perhaps the AND is superfluous and implied - if you can make two (or more) direct "normal" links from the "Start" element to the two (or more) tasks that you want to activate concurrently, that might be sufficient.

Kani

Thank you for the clarification given,

Rick Poulin

If all he's trying to do is call 2 tasks, he can just link to both from the start event, which is obviously better than creating a dummy task and a gateway to accomplish the same thing.

Has that worked for you? Last I checked, I thought that farked on me when I tried initializing such a workflow. It's the conceptual equivalent of having two tasks with start="t" in WFT, which wasn't allowed. Maybe I was using one of the earlier versions of WFM though -- I don't recall.

Migrateduser

It's the conceptual equivalent of having two tasks with start="t" in WFT, which wasn't allowed.

Since when? I haven't written WFTs in a while, but why can't you have 2 start tasks?

Adam Stoller

It's the conceptual equivalent of having two tasks with start="t" in WFT, which wasn't allowed.

I have to agree with Smitty here. As far as I can recall, going back to TS 4.0 when workflow was first introduced into TeamSite (though I don't recall explicitly trying to do it), having multiple start tasks has always been allowed - though usually it's been done by mistake rather than by design.

It's essentially a concurrent model where you would (usually) need to define the attached files in all such earmarked tasks and (usually) would have the same areavpath - though both of those are optional (with complications ensuing when they aren't identical)

So - should it be possible to have multiple tasks activated when a job is instantiated? Yes.
Is it recommended? Not in general, but there could be reasonable cases for it.

What remains is the question of whether, in WFM, you would do:

               +->[Task_A]
[Start]->[AND]-+
               +->[Task_B]

        +->[Task_A]
[Start]-+
        +->[Task_B]

Theoretically either should work, but I think technically the latter is probably more correct in terms of how it would get translated from the model to the job specification (which you should be able to check by enabling WFM debugging)