Errors versus Failure

As explained under Workflow Event Lifecycle, an event's activation algorithm may cause a pending event to become in error or to fail (amongst other things). You control the exact state when you design your workflow event type activation algorithms.

The main differences between these two states is as follows:

• As described under Some Workflow Events May Fail, a failed event causes the entire workflow process to fail (and it cannot be restarted).
• As described under Workflow Events May Be In Error, a user can correct the cause of an error event's error and then change the event's status back to pending. The pending event will be processed the next time the activation process runs.

You should follow the following guidelines when designing your validation logic in your workflow event activation algorithms:

• If the cause of the problem is correctable by a user, you should set the state of the event to be in error.
• If the cause of the problem is not correctable by a user (e.g., you were interfaced information that cannot be corrected by your users), you should set the state of the event to fail.