Duet Enterprise Standard Workflow - Run Reports in Runtime

[Former Member]

Hi All,

I would like to run reports, ones used to synchronize workflow tasks between SAP and SharePoint, in runtime, too, besides scheduled background execution only.

These reports are: RSWNSEL and S_OSP_WF_ITEM_SELECTION.

In the configuration guide SAP recommends to run them in background at the frequency of fifteen minutes.

My issue is that if the workflow object is updated in the middle of these fifteen minutes and approval information task is not updated immediately, we would have inconsistent information between SharePoint task and SAP task.

In this case when the approver would try to modify approval (by approving, rejecting, etc.), an error will be raised from SAP. It's something that we don't want. We would like to have task updated.

Have you already gone through this issue?

Is there any kind of process you can suggest me to follow?

Is there any other report that I can run on runtime selecting a specific workflow-task?

Thanks and Regards,

Nicola

[Former Member]

Hi Nicola,

The frequency of 15 minutes is a recommendation.  However, these jobs can be scheduled to run on any frequency (1, 5, 10 minutes, etc.) to suite the needs of your organization.

Cheers,

  Helen

[Former Member]

Hi Helen,

i know that's a recommendation only and i think it's also a good recommendation. It wouldn't be good for performance to run a job every minute, it would constantly occupy a background process on the server.

Thanks

Nicola

[Former Member]

Hi Nicola,

You need to schedule the job as per your custom workflow processes.

And yes its true if any workflow step occurs in between that time, it wouldn't be propagated immedeatly to SP.

So ideally it would be your call to decide the frequency of background jobs.

[Former Member]

Hi Meghna,

What do you mean by "it would be your call to decide"...which call?

So you have never encountered this issue before, have you?

Thanks

Nicola

[Former Member]

Hi,

I havent encountered this issue.

But i have worked on Duet Enterprise workflow.The functionality of the 2 jobs is to select the items and send it to sharepoint.Now the workitems executed in between 2 job cycles will be propogated only when the next job is run.

This would imply they would be replicated on SP a few minutes later.

So if you have a scenario wherein you expect to get work items at a higher frequency, then the only option is to reduce the time intervals for the jobs.

[Former Member]

Hi,

If i reduce time intervals for my job, i would probably have a lot of jobs running with no data. At the  same time i still get the issue, cause that can happen in the middle of two executions.

As i have already said i don't want a job scheduled every minute, it will affect system performance.

Thanks for your reply Meghna.

Regards,

Nico

[Former Member]

Hi Nicola,

The risk of inconsistent information between [source] SAP task and [derived] SharePoint task is an inevitable consequence of the publishing behaviour of Duet Enterprise workflow capability.
The notification of changed workitems is on batch basis, first collecting the set of changed workitems and next propagate via NetWeaver Gateway to SharePoint.

This effect is typical for push scenarios: the workitem data is pushed from SAP workflow to SharePoint.
Opening a task(form) on SharePoint side as result does not [need to] connect to SAP; data is copied into / available at SharePoint side. Connection to SAP is only needed upon task-decision propagation from SharePoint to SAP.

Note that the SAP/SharePoint inconsistency risk is not present if all the task decision making is done from SharePoint; and no longer also from within SAP GUI. SharePoint side itself updates / completes the SharePoint and SAP tasks. From your question I assume in your context it is still applicable that the SAP tasks can also still be handled from SAP GUI / UWL.

You can reduce the risk of inconsistent information by reducing the interval between notification execution, but never completely to zero. You must make an informed architectural trade-off decision for the optimal interval in your specific situation.

Regards, William.

[Former Member]

Hi William,

thanks for your reply.

In my context SAP task can still be triggered, but it's not recommended. So my concern is not around it. I am not even concerned about inconsistent data, cause i know that only an improper workflow could raise a DB inconsistency.

My request is just about inconsistent information, as you said, which gives best experience to the user but without overburdening the system.

Anyway what i would like to have, it is something like an immediate task pushing (to sharepoint) in case of task UPDATE or DELETE.

Maintaining task CREATION as well as it's running at the moment by using background process.

I did not have time to investigate. I will soon.

Regards