Workflow Processes Can Have Multiple Branches

Using the workflow event dependencies, a workflow process may have multiple branches. There are several reasons why you may want to set up a process to contain multiple branches:

There may be events that can run in parallel. This is useful if the related tasks take time to execute. The following is an example of such a workflow process.

The figure illustrates how you can define parallel events in a workflow process.

In the example above, if event 3 is canceled and event 4 completes, (or if event 4 is canceled and event 3 completes), event 5 will proceed. However, if both event 3 and event 4 are canceled, all remaining events will be canceled.

It should be noted that if either event 3 or 4 fails, ALL events in the process will be canceled, including events in a different branch.

The figure indicates what happens to workflow events in the parallel and subsequent branches when a workflow event in a branch fails.

You may have a business process that has some common events and some events that are mutually exclusive. Rather than setting up several processes, you can set up one process that branches based on specific criteria.

The figure illustrates how you can branch events in the workflow process based on a specific condition.

In the above example, event 2 determines if the workflow process is associated with an existing customer or a new customer.

For a new customer; events 3, 4, 5 and 6 are executed.
For an existing customer, events 7, 8, 9 and 10 are executed.

Event 2 does this by creating an entry in the Context collection indicating which branch should continue. (For example Context Type / Value of BRANCH/ A). Events 3 and 7 should be special events whose purpose is to read the BRANCH context type and determine if its branch should continue or be canceled.

In this example, Event 3's algorithm will continue if the context value for BRANCH is A and Event 7 will only continue if the context value for BRANCH is B.

The figure indicates what happens to workflow events in a branch when the branch does not satisfy a particular criteria.

Note: The above diagram and description indicates the use of context records to determine which branch to continue. If your implementation chooses to use characteristics instead, the same logic above may be implemented using characteristics as well.