Multiple Workflows Control by One Main Workflow

Marge131

I need to have users start multiple workflows and after an approval step stop at a "waiting" step.

At this point, I need another workflow to be started and find all the workflows at this "waiting" step and run a deployment on each one. After the deployments have been completed it will move the "waiting" workflow steps on.

Has anyone tried to do something like this? I am thinking I will have to do a webservice for the main workflow to interact with all the waiting workflows?

Thanks

Adam Stoller

I need to have users start multiple workflows and after an approval step stop at a "waiting" step. At this point, I need another workflow to be started and find all the workflows at this "waiting" step and run a deployment on each one. After the deployments have been completed it will move the "waiting" workflow steps on. Has anyone tried to do something like this? I am thinking I will have to do a webservice for the main workflow to interact with all the waiting workflows? Thanks

Why a web service?
The subordinate workflows would "wait" with an externaltask that has N-possible transitions but doesn't actually perform the transition.
The master workflow would query the workflow system to find all active "wait" tasks and then explicitly transition them to their "deployment" task.
If it's okay to let each individual subordinate workflow continue on their own from there - fine, otherwise you do the same thing with the deployment task that you did for the "wait" task - which is define the transitions but don't perform them - and then the master workflow can wait until all the deployments are done and then transition those tasks.

You'll probably need to record the jobid's for each "wait" state task so that you know which jobs to look for completed "deployment" tasks (or perhaps an additional "wait" state task).

All of this should be do-able via either the Perl TeamSite::WF* modules or through Java / CSSDK - I don't believe a web service is needed for any of it.