wf - passing an approval value to an activity - workflow-foundation-4

I have an Activity( waiting for an approval ) that contains a WhileActivity. In the while activity I want to read the value of an argument - if it returns true I execute I continue with workflow execution, otherwise I stop the hanging the executing till the argument value turns true
How can I do this - for a while or other activities - ?
Thank you

If the value you are waiting on is being changed by another activity you can use a TrackingParticipant to watch for the value changing and when that happens resume a bookmark to notify your waiting activity.

Sounds more like your requirements would be better served by a State Machine workflow.
Okay, so you don't want to use a State Machine workflow. So, here's how you do it.
You have to create a custom Activity that is used in conjunction with a Workflow Extension. An Extension is just an object that can be accessed by your Activities as the workflow executes and allows your Activities to communicate with the classes that are executing the workflow.
Your custom Activity must be able to create a Bookmark and offload the Workflow. It does this while you wait for the correct value from your Extension. You don't need to do this in any While Activity loop. You just do the following
Get your Extension
Get the current value you are evaluating on
If you aren't happy, create a bookmark
When the bookmark resumes, go to step 1.
If you are happy, continue execution.

Related

Is there a way to abort a ScheduledActivity of a SchedulableState?

I would like to know if it is possible to cancel an execution of an ScheduledActivity.
Example:
A SchedulableState of type A is created, and the scheduledActivity will execute a flow that creates another SchedulableState of type A. It means that the app will always execute the flow determined in the activity and create another state of type A.
How can I abort the execution of the activity?
How can I identify if is there a ScheduledActivity waiting to be executed?
As of Corda 4.x, there is no API to cancel scheduled activities.
Instead, you'd have to connect to the node's database directly and drop the required rows from the node's NODE_SCHEDULED_STATES table.

Symfony - background task from form setup

Would you know how to run a background task on Symfony 4, based on the setup of a form ? This would avoid that the user has to remain on the form until the task is finished.
The idea would be that when the form is validated, it starts an independant background task. Then the user can continue its navigation and come back once the task is finished to get the results.
Thanks for your help,
You need to use pattern Message Bus. Symfony has own implementation of this pattern since version 4.1 introducing Messenger Component.
You can see documentation here: https://symfony.com/doc/current/components/messenger.html
To get it work you need some external program that will implement AMQP protocol. Most popular in PHP world IMHO RabbitMQ.
A very simple solution for this could be the following procedure:
Form is valid.
A temporary file is created.
Cronjob gets executed every five minutes and starts a symfony command.
The command checks if the file exists and if it's empty.
If so, the command works of the background task. But before this, the command write it's process id in the file to prevent from beeing excuted a second time.
Remove the file when the command has finished.
As long as the file exists you can show a hint for the user that the task is running.

IBM BPM 8.5.6 Suspend task

Is it possible to suspend a task via process portal in IBM BPM 8.5.6. In the 6.2 version we were able to do this via inbox or saved searches. However the new saved searches doesn't support this? Is there a way to do this?
In v8.5 there is nothing like suspending a task from process portal. Although we can suspend a task from Admin Console .
Moreover if you want to suspend it from process portal , you can try the below way:
create a HS , having a text box for accepting PID of the process.
Use JS API , to suspend the Task for the provided PID.
var id = tw.local.pid ;
tw.system.findProcessInstanceByID(id).suspend() ;
Expose this human service as a Startable Service to the intented users.
provide the PID which you want to suspend .
As Jyoti Yadav already stated, you can suspend a task via Javascript API.
An alternate way would be using the /ProcessAdmin page. After logging in you choose the tab "Process Inspector" from the top of the page and search for your instances:
This would be a less flexible, but more human approachable way of suspending a task.
You can not suspend a task, you can suspend the instance.
This is OK if all tasks are sequential, but what if you have parallel tasks and you want to suspend only one of them.
A great alternative that i used is:
assign that task to the system user (bpmadmin, wasadmin, celladmin, deadmin,.... whatever you named it), then your instance is still active but it can not be completed until you reassign it back to a user and it finishes it.
This way you can create tasks now, and with a timer you can assign them to a user/group at a specified time.
The code i used:
tw.system.findTaskByID("123456").reassignTo("bpmadmin");
to assign it to the system user so no one can see it,
then in the timer script:
tw.system.findTaskByID("123456").reassignBackToRole();
to assign it back to the group to be executed.
You can either suspend them through the Process Inspector or via REST Api calls that BPM provides. URL can be :
https://baseroot:9443/bpmrest-ui/BPMRestAPITester/index.jsp
In answer to the follow up question, you can put it in the administration portal by exposing it as an "administration service" instead of a "human service".
https://ip:port/rest/bpm/wle/v1/process/xx?action=suspend&parts=all (put)
and
https://ip:port/rest/bpm/wle/v1/task?action=cancel&taskIDs=? (put)
You can refer to the API document of V 8.5.6 for task suspension and then use your own task ID to drop the API suspension task

How to get the user who initiated the process in IBM BPM 8.5?

How to get the user who initiated the process in IBM BPM 8.5. I want to reassign my task to the user who actually initiated the process. How it can be achieved in IBM BPM?
There are several ways to get that who initiated a Task , But who initiated a process Instance is somewhat different.
You can perform one out of the following :
Add a private variable and assign it tw.system.user_loginName at the POST of start. you can access that variable for user who initiated the process.(It will be null or undefined for the scenario if task is initiated by some REST API or UCA.)
Place a Tracking group after Start event . Add a input variable to it as username , assign it a value same as tw.system.user_loginName. So whenever Process is started entry will be inserted to DB Table.You can retrieve this value from that view in PerformanceDB.
Also there might be some table ,logging the process Instances details , where you can find the user_id directly.
I suggest you to look in getStarter() method of ProcessInstanceData API.
Official Documentation on API
This link on IBM Developerworks should help you too: Process Starter
Unfortunately there's not an Out Of The Box way to do this - nothing is recorded in the Process Instance that indicates "who" started a process. I presume this is because there are many ways to launch a process instance - from the Portal, via a Message Event, from an API call, etc.
Perhaps the best way to handle this is to add a required Input parameter to your BPD, and supply "who" started the process when you launch it. Unfortunately you can't supply any inputs from the OOTB Portal "New", but you can easilty build your own "launcher".
If you want to route the first task in process to the user that started the process the easiest approach is to simply put the start point in the lane, and on the activity select routing to "Last User In Lane". This will take care of the use case for you without requiring that you do the book keeping to track the user.
Its been a while since I've implemented this, so I can't remember if it will work elegantly if you have system steps before the first task, but this can easily be handled by moving the system steps into the human service to be executed as part of that call, rather than as a separate step in the BPD.
Define variable as string type and using script task to define the login user that use this task and assign it to your defined variable to keep to you in all of the process as initiator of the task.
You can use this line of code to achieve the same:
tw.system.user_loginName

how the workflow runtime obtains all of the information about the activity in wf 4.0 so that we can alter the execution sequence?

How the workflow runtime knows about its activity order and parameter. Can we alter the execution behaviour or order of activity execution in runing workflow?
My requirment is how to control the activity execution so that we can explicitly get current execution activity , stop, re run and change parameter.
We can alter the execution order by creating custom control flow activity. This can be done by inheriting NativeActivity.
For example, creating custom sequence activity you can go through this example.
http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/VBWF4CustomSequenceActivity-cd65cb4c

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