Possible agents of steps

[Dart, Jocelyn]

Hi Frank,
Sequence of assigning agents to a workitem is roughly as follows:
 
1) System finds all possible agents for task
2) Agent determination in workflow step is evaluated - system then reduces
the
list of all possible agents to the subset of agents found during agent
determination
PROVIDED THE AGENTS ARE ALSO POSSIBLE AGENTS.
3) Excluded agents are removed from the list.
 
With step 2 there are a few different scenarios possible:
1) If all of the agents determined are also possible agents, the selected
agents
are the agents determined.
2) If some of the agents determined are possible agents, the selected agents
 
are ONLY those agents determined who are also possible agents.
3) If none of the agents determined are possible agents, THE LIST IS NOT
RESTRICTED!
 
So basically yes the situation you are experiencing is normal practice - the
theory
is that if we can't find the specific agents at least we should try and send
it
to the possible agents so that the workitem isn't left in limbo without any
agents
at all.
 
There are a couple of ways to stop this.
In your case I'd suggest looking at what's happening with forwarding - maybe
you
can change the workflow so that the correct agent is determined whether or
not
the work item has been forwarded.
 
Alternatively add a step prior to check
that the agents in your expression are possible agents and if not send to a
default
person, e.g. an administrator, who can sort it out, and forward to the
correct agent.
For instance you could use one of the methods in business object WF_TASK to
get all
possible agents, then use a condition to check that the agent chosen is in
the table list.
 
Hope that helps.
Regards,
        Jocelyn Dart
Consultant (BBP, Ecommerce, Internet Transaction Server, Workflow)
SAP Australia
Email jocelyn.dart at sap.com <mailto:jocelyn.dart at sap.com>
Tel: +61 412 390 267
Fax: +61 2 9935 4880
 
 
-----Original Message-----
From: frank smith [mailto:frankreichenbach at dontgotmail.com]
Sent: Wednesday, 4 July 2001 11:40 PM
To: SAP-WUG at MITVMA.MIT.EDU
Subject: Possible agents of steps
 
 
Hi everyone,
                within a step the agent is being determined at runtime by an
expression.
Under some circumstances this expression holds an agent that is not among
the "possible agents" of that task. (Due to wrong forwarding undertaken by
users
in the previous step.)
In this situation every user of the "possible agents" receives that workitem
in their workplace.
As the status of this workflow does not change to "ERROR", the administrator
is unable to tell.
 
Is this the normal reaction of the workflow management system in this
situation or a customizing problem???
 
Thanks in advance.
 
Cheers,
 
Frank
 
 
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