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Executing Workflow Policies with Workflow Monitor Agent

To execute your Workflow policies, you need to start Workflow Monitor Agent. Workflow Monitor Agent checks when the conditions of policies are met, and executes actions once those conditions are met.

You start and stop the Workflow Monitor Agent task in the Administration - Server views.

Table 65 describes Workflow policies database tables.

What Workflow Monitor Agent Does

Workflow Monitor Agent performs several server processes that monitor the Siebel database. Workflow Monitor Agent:

• Checks the Escalation Requests table to see when the conditions of a policy are met
• Monitors all policies within a single group

  NOTE:  You can only run one Workflow Monitor Agent process against a specific group at one time. You can run multiple Workflow Monitor Agent processes at the same time, but they must be against different groups; if you run two Workflow Monitor Agent processes against the same group, deadlocks will occur.

• If you use Action Agent = True, this generates requests for Workflow Action Agent in the Action Request table (S_ESCL_ACTN_REQ)
• Purges requests from the S_ESCL_REQ table after processing. When a database trigger is activated because a workflow policy condition is met, a record is inserted into the Escalation Request table, S_ESCL_REQ. Workflow Monitor Agent (Workmon) evaluates the request against the rules set up by the policies in the workflow policy group

If you use Action Agent = True, and if Workmon determines that the request in the S_ESCL_REQ table has no duration defined in the policy, Workmon either takes direct action and logs an entry into the S_ESCL_LOG table or sends it to the S_ESCL_ACTN_REQ table.

If Workmon determines that the request has a time element that must be met, the request is sent to the S_ESCL_STATE table along with the expiration time. The request stays in the S_ESCL_STATE table until the expiration time is met, or the request is removed because the conditions of the policy are no longer met. Workmon evaluates each of the requests that remains in the S_ESCL_STATE table for a time duration match or to determine if the condition still matches in the S_ESCL_STATE table. If you use Action Agent = True, then as each match occurs WorkMon either takes direct action and logs an entry into the S_ESCL_LOG table or sends it to the S_ESCL_ACTN_REQ table.

NOTE:  If a workflow policy has a specified duration, the duration time is calculated from the time WorkMon detects that the row is in violation of the policy, not from the time the row was inserted into S_ESCL_REQ. For example, if you create a policy and set the duration as one week, but then WorkMon is not started until several days after Generate Triggers is run, the policy action will fire one week from when WorkMon is started, not one week from when the policy is created or Generate Triggers is run.

When the request for an action is made to the S_ESCL_ACTN_REQ table, Workflow Action Agent executes the action and logs an entry into the S_ESCL_LOG table.More information about Workflow Monitor Agent is provided in the following sections:

• Using Workflow Monitor Agent
• Using Workflow Action Agent
• Starting Workflow Agent Processes Automatically with Siebel Server