Workflow Deadline Monitoring Question

[Michael Pokraka]

I can quite confidently give you a consultant's answer on that one: It
depends.
 
As needed gives you better accuracy, but is only feasible if you have few
deadlines, I'd say less than 10/hour (note, this is 'how many workitems
with a deadline are we creating'). Periodic means that you are only as
accurate as the job, 5 or 10 minutes should be reasonable. Your minute's
deadline will thus happen with the next run after the deadline has passed=
,
thus 1-6 minutes later.
Just my opinion, but I'm very wary of using deadlines for the purpose of
introducing a minute's delay into a process or similar, and also avoid
using deadlines in frequent workflows (1000's per day). The reason is
performance, each deadline does all the schedule checking and creates it'=
s
own table entries which the deadline monitoring job has to additionally
check - a double performance hit.
 
Cheers
Mike
 
 
David E. Yung wrote:
> On this note, I have a question for the group...
>
> Would you recommend (or is this the option you've made) to use periodic
> deadline monitoring versus as needed.  If so, I have another question:
>
> Let's say for example that you schedule the deadline monitoring to be
> every
> 5 minutes, but you have a certain workflow which sets the deadline of a
> work
> item to be 1 minute in the future.  What happens to this item?  Does it
> execute within the specified minute or does it need to wait the 5 minut=
es
> (at the most obviously) to be executed?
>
> Right now, I have gone with the as needed approach because I don't want
> jobs
> running every minute.
>
> Any opinions, recommendations etc on this matter will be greatly
> appreciated.
>
> Also, what period of time have you chosen for the interval of the jobs?
>
> Regards
>
> David Yung
>
> -----Original Message-----
>> From: SAP Workflow [mailto:Owner-SAP-WUG at MITVMA.MIT.EDU] On Behalf Of
> Michael Pokraka
> Sent: Monday, December 01, 2003 11:20
> To: SAP-WUG at MITVMA.MIT.EDU
> Subject: Re: Workflow Deadline Monitoring Question
>
> No prob, another small bit of info I might add is that I'm on a 6.20
> system at the moment and as-needed scheduling is no longer available.
> Which makes sense and emphasizes that SAP see workflow as becoming
> widespread and much more utilized.
>
> Cheers
> Mike
>
> Josefek, Richard wrote:
>> Mike,
>> Thank you so much for your response.
>> Shortly after receiving it, we implemented the change and our workflow
>> processing has been working flawlessly since.
>> I cannot tell you how many hours have been put into researching this
>> problem over the past year. We even went so far as opening up an OSS
>> note
>> with SAP. They were no help at all.
>>
>> Thank you again!
>>
>> Rick
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: SAP Workflow [mailto:Owner-SAP-WUG at MITVMA.MIT.EDU]On Behalf Of
>> Michael Pokraka
>> Sent: Wednesday, November 19, 2003 7:17 AM
>> To: SAP-WUG at MITVMA.MIT.EDU
>> Subject: Re: Workflow Deadline Monitoring Question
>>
>>
>> Hi,
>> Check that your monitoring is configured for periodic deadline
>> monitoring
>> (as opposed to as-needed). Non-periodic causes WI's to check and
>> schedule
>> deadline jobs. In other words, if an item is created and it sees that =
no
>> job is scheduled before it's deadline, it will schedule it unless the
>> 'periodic monitoring' is set.
>> Cheers
>> Mike
>>
>> Somewhere in the mists of time Josefek, Richardwrote:
>>>> We've run into a problem that I'm hoping you can shed some light on
>>>> for
>>>> us.  We've had a problem occurring in our Production environment sin=
ce
>>>> last December, 2002.  Recently, these problems have been causing our
>>>> clients a lot of work to monitor and resolve.  Here's a synopsis:
>>>>
>>>> We use Maestro to control Workflow deadline monitoring.  Maestro run=
s
>>>> SWWDHEX on a schedule that our clients have requested.  We do not us=
e
>>>> SAP.  However, last December, configuration for the SAP controlling =
of
>>>> deadline monitoring was turned on in our Production environment by a=
n
>>>> SAP consultant.  We immediately corrected the situation and turned i=
t
>>>> off.  However, this has caused a series of problems that we have yet
>>>> to
>>>> recover from.
>>>>
>>>> Individuals approving within one of two workflows were causing the
>>>> SWWDHEX to instantiate in SAP (without their knowledge).  Once, this
>>>> happens, it continues every 10 minutes.   One of the things we did t=
o
>>>> prevent this from happening was remove security from each individual=
.
>>>> However, we have found this is not a good solution because every onc=
e
>>>> in
>>>> a while (under conditions we cannot determine) a client will receive
>>>> an
>>>> error message "Background job SWWDHEX cannot be scheduled (error 6)"=
.
>>>> Some of these clients will notice the error message and try to appro=
ve
>>>> the document again and the second time they are successful.
>>>>
>>>> We are assuming that the configuration that was turned on has someho=
w
>>>> caused this irrevocable process to begin, even though we have shut i=
t
>>>> off.  We think that somewhere in the SAP environment, there is some
>>>> trigger that is causing this job to run.  (Perhaps an assumption in
>>>> the
>>>> code that if we are not using permanent deadline monitoring, we must
>>>> be
>>>> using periodic instead of checking table values?)
>>>>
>>>> Any assistance you can provide on what triggers there might be in SA=
P
>>>> that would cause this to happen would be much appreciated!
>>>>
>>>> Thanks!
>>> Rick
>>>
>>> ---------------------------------------------------------
>>> This e-mail transmission may contain information that is proprietary,
>>> privileged and/or confidential and is intended exclusively for the
>>> person(s) to whom it is addressed. Any use, copying, retention or
>>> disclosure by any person other than the intended recipient or the
>>> intended
>>> recipient's designees is strictly prohibited. If you are not the
>>> intended
>>> recipient or their designee, please notify the sender immediately by
>>> return e-mail and delete all copies.
>>>
>>> ---------------------------------------------------------
>>>
>>
>>
>
>