You can define rules that automatically transition a case into
a different state. For example, you can indicate a literature request
should be transitioned to the Follow Up state
1 week after the literature is sent. These rules are held in algorithms
that are plugged in on the case type and therefore you can define
any type of automatic transition rules.
Cases in a state with automatic transition rules are monitored
by the CASETRAN background process. Each time this program runs, the respective
automatic transition plug-in is called for each such case and it transitions
the case if the condition applies.
When the user adds a new case or changes the state of a case manually
the system attempts to auto-transition the case to subsequent statuses
as necessary. If auto-transition rules apply to the new state (and
to subsequent ones) they would be executed right away. In other words,
you don't need to wait for the auto-transition background process
to be executed. An indication that the case was auto-transitioned
online is displayed right below the action buttons section.
Note:
Auto-Transition Errors. Online auto-transition is
performed recursively committing each successful state transition
to the database. It is performed up to 100 times or until an error
is encountered during the process. If this happens, auto-transition
stops at the last non-transitory state into which a successful
transition had occurred. Two case log entries will be generated automatically
- one containing the message that a transition error has occurred,
and a second containing the actual error message. A To Do entry will
also be generated automatically upon rollback. The type of this To
Do entry will be taken from 1) the Case Transition Exception
To Do Type
option for the Business Object associated with the case type, and if this is not populated, 2)
the Exception To Do Type indicated on the
Case Options Feature Configuration. All of the above error handling
is true for both batch and online processing of cases.
Note:
Triggering Auto-Transition. If you have a customized
process that affects the state of a case and you want the case to
be auto-transitioned right away, i.e. not wait for the next scheduled
CASETRAN background
process to execute, you can customize that process to trigger auto-transition
for the specific case, or you can put the state transition logic into
the routines that execute at state entry time.