How Are Workflow Events Completed?
Several background processes can cause a workflow event to complete as described below:
- A background process (WFET) activates events whose trigger date is no longer in the future. (An event's trigger date can be set to a future date when its earlier, dependent events are completed if the workflow process template so indicates). After it activates an event, this process also activates later dependent events until there are no more events to activate. Refer to Workflow Event Dependencies & Trigger Date for more information.
WFET attempts to activate workflow events for a workflow process. The system orders the workflow process records by their workflow process ID, which is a system-generated random number. As a result, you should ensure that the activation algorithms do not expect WF process records to be processed in any other order, such as the order that the WF process records were created. For example, if a "drop request" and an "add request" are both received for the same customer, two workflow processes are created. The activation algorithms for the events for these two processes should work regardless of whether the "drop request" is processed first or the "add request" is processed first.
- The various waiting background processes are responsible for activating events when the thing they are waiting on is complete. For example, if an event creates a pending field activity, it goes into the Waiting state. The WAITFA background process will activate the Waiting event when the field activity becomes Complete. Refer to Waiting Events And Their Waiting Process for more information.
In addition, if the workflow event type indicates that manual completion is allowed, a user may change the status of the event to complete using the workflow process user interface. When an event is manually completed, the system also activates later dependent events until there are no more events to activate.
Refer to The Big Picture Of Workflow Events for more information about the various types of workflow events and what happens when they are completed.