Scenario 2: The Workflow-in-Progress Scenario

Scenario Description

The end user or the administrator has submitted a form that triggered a workflow. The instance on which the workflow is executing and on which the user's session exists is generally going to be the same except in case of some scheduled tasks where they can be different. This instances goes down while the workflow is in progress.

Without Session Persistence

User experience: A nontransparent failover. The form submit returns the user to the login page. The workflow task instance being executed should be in the repository, but because the node of execution is down, the workflow status will be “terminated.”

Recovery steps: The workflow has to be submitted again. This has to be done by going back to the same form and reentering the same information that was used to trigger the workflow before the node failed.

The submission of the same request data may work in some cases, but not all. If the workflow provisions to more than one resource during its execution and some of these resources were provisioned before the failure, the workflow resubmission from the user would have to account for the “already provisioned to” resources. Note that the terminated workflow sticks around in the repository until the resultLimit expires on the TaskInstance object.

With Session Persistence

User experience: A nontransparent failover. The user does not get logged out because his session is persisted and reestablished in the new instance. The form submit, however, will probably result in an error because the workflow will be terminated. This failover is nontransparent because recovery actions are needed.

Recovery steps: Same as in the Without Session Persistence mode. The user has to resubmit the request that triggered off the previous workflow with the same or modified parameters.

Other Scenario Examples

• An end user has just submitted a self-registration request to create an Identity Manager account and the instance goes down.

• An administrator has just submitted a “password reset” request that is in progress and the instances goes down.