Pausing a Workflow - workflow-foundation-4

Lets say I have a sample workflow that does the following:
Receive something
Run long activity1 (no user input)
Run long activity2 (no user input)
Send something
Usually activity2 should run automatically after activity1 is finished, but I would like to prevent the execution of activity2 until the workflow gets the go ahead from a user. While activity1 is running, I want to be able to tell the workflow to pause after it is done activity1 and continue with activity2 when told.
I guess I need a flag that the workflow can check before it run activity2 but how can I update this flag while activity1 is running?
Thanks

Create some kind of blocking activity, either using a bookmark or a WCF request and execute that before activity2 starts. That way you can tell it to resume. You can nest it in an If activity of you only want to wait if a certain condition has not been met.

Related

How to stop a workflow immediately when a session fails?

I have a workflow that has many sessions that run in parallel to each other. When one of the session fails, the workflow waits for the other session to complete and then the entire workflow gets failed. We have selected the option "fail parent if this task fails". But we want the workflow to fail and stop immediately if any of the session fails without waiting for other sessions to finish.
ps: We have a unix shell script that calls all the workflows one by one. So if we can solve it using unix shell scripting that would be fine aswell.
Does anyone have any solution for it?
Best thing you can do in Informatica is use a Control Task to Abort the worklfow, and have it connected from all sessions with an OR condition. Something like:
start--S1--S2--S3
\ \ \
\---\---\-(OR)-CTL

How to create email template in autosys

Lets say i have a job that runs for 10mins(lets say the time as 10.00). i set max_run_alarm as 3. i should get an email at 10.03 where i can goahead and see why the job is running more than the max_run_alarm. if i use max_run_alarm i am able to see in the logs triggering that alarm, but I cannot spend all day monitoring the logs to see which job is taking long as i have many jobs. my question is am i using max_run_alarm in the correct way or is there something else i am missing or is there entirely different way for the emails to generate.
There is an added functionality where you can configure the email id where all Autosys notification to be sent out.
Incase of any event such as Job Failure / Termination / Run Alarms etc are notified to that email address.
This is configured by the Autosys Admin or the Scheduling Team which i call them as.

Running process not shown in active process Instances and difference between ASYNC & SYNC tasks

My workflow is quite simple, I have two script, first script is ASYNC and the second is SYNC. In each script I have a loop from 0 to Integer.MAX_VALUE as follow
for(int i=0;i<Integer.MAX_VALUE;i++)
System.out.println("value is "+i);
When I run my process, it starts working and I can see in my log file that it is being filled. But when I want to stop it, I find nothing in my active process instances, neither in completed process or even in aborted. even if I check my data base, I have nothing related to this process in the ProcessInstanceInfo or even ProcessInstanceLog. So weird isn't it? what could be the reason?
The goal from creating this workflow is to see the difference between ASYNC and SYNC tasks, because as I know that ASYNC tasks when they start running, the workflow don't have to wait until this task finish, but what I have is that my task ASYNC is still running and it didn't go to next task. So my second question is can any one give me the difference between ASYNC and SYNC with a good example to learn. I would appreciate if I'll get at least one answer on one of my two questions. thanks
What do you stop? Do you abort the process instance ?
In the scripts you can populate the process variables with kcontext.setVariable("variable_name","variable_value"). This will reflect in DB if you have defined the process variable persistent in the process model.
The tasks, the sync one will return the flow control to the process when is completed. In contrast to the async one, process flow will continue immediately after it sends the async tasks to execute.

Autosys Email Generation if the job runs more than the time specified

Currenty I have requirement in my enviroment for the autosys email notifition.
Requirement: If the job runs more than the specified time it should trigger an email.
What I am trying is using max_run_alam, but I am not successful.
Lets say i have a job that runs for 10mins(lets say the time as 10.00). i set max_run_alarm as 3. i should get an email at 10.03 where i can goahead and see why the job is running more than the max_run_alarm. if i use max_run_alarm i am able to see in the logs triggering that alarm, but I cannot spend all day monitoring the logs to see which job is taking long as i have many jobs. my question is am i using max_run_alarm in the correct way or is there something else i am missing or is there entirely different way for the emails to generate.
pls advise.
We are using autosys R11 at work. I believe the triggering of emails is already automated in higher versions of autosys, but, in our version, to send automatic emails after a certain time, we create two extra autosys jobs. One autosys job starts at the same time as the job you want to "monitor". This job contains a 'sleep' command. (in your example, the command would be "sleep 180" for the job to run for 3 minutes until completion). The second extra job is the sending of the email and only starts after successful completion of the sleep-job.
To prevent the mail from being send every time the autosys box starts, you have to add your first job as BOX_SUCCESS condition. The sleep-job will run to completion, but the mail-job went from the "ACTIVATED" state to the "INACTIVE" state because the autosys box isn't RUNNING anymore.

wf - passing an approval value to an activity

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.

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