Workitem requested start

Wed May 21 12:16:06 EDT 2003

If you need to guarantee 10 mins turn around, how do you
intend to guarantee that a free batch service will be available
to run EXACTLY when scheduled. ?
Perhaps this might be why sometimes a delay occurs ?

Phil Soady
Senior Consultant
Business Technologies
SAP Australia
* : 0412 213 079
* : phil.soady at sap.com

-----Original Message-----
From: Balasubramaniam, Swaminathan [mailto:SBalasubramaniam at medrad.com]
Sent: Wednesday, May 21, 2003 1:17 AM
To: SAP-WUG at MITVMA.MIT.EDU
Subject: Re: Workitem requested start

Thomsz,
No Offense.
We have a Service notification workflow with inbuilt escalation logic. We have our field reps receive a page from SAP every ten minutes when a customer calls and lodges a request for Service. In case of Emergency, it is set as 10 minutes. In case of PM calls(medium), it is set as 2 hrs. We handle this via the priority field on the notif.

Also during every cycle, along with the page to the rep, the task will also send an email and has a escalation logic inbuilt. It will inform the initiator the first three times and then escalate to initiator and zone members and finally will escalate all the way to the Customer Service top officials.

This entire thing will continue until the Service Notification is put in Process which means the rep has contacted the customer. We have implemented this for increasing our customer response time. I guess, I could have used a wait statement in the task. Only thing is the log would not tell me it is waiting. So I used the deadline.

>From all your responses, I understood some of the missing links in my knowledge resource.

Hope this sheds some light on the forest.

Thanks for your help
Swami

-----Original Message-----
From: Zmudzin,Tomasz,VEVEY,GL-IS/IT [mailto:Tomasz.Zmudzin at nestle.com]
Sent: Tuesday, May 20, 2003 10:56 AM
To: SAP Workflow Users' Group
Cc: SBalasubramaniam at kramer.medrad.com; vara prasad Kandagatla
Subject: RE: Workitem requested start

With my full respect -- this may well be true. And if I could also ask you
to shed some light on the forest -- that would be magnificent!   I will be
delighted to learn something -- that's why participating to the forum is fun!

I am not claiming being always right. Workflow processes are simply typically deployed to support mass processes, the timelines of which typically extend into days (at least). One of the bigger benefits -- actively notifying sporadic process participants -- is also typical for processes where waiting for any action takes most time -- and we're in the 'days' or 'weeks' range again. Also, starting a process after a delay typically indicates some design issues. But that's 'typically' again -- not always.

Now in the case of your particular process -- please note I have not excluded that these deadlines MAY be required by business. Handling such items via workflow is not a typical scenario though as it does NOT guarantee service within specific timelines. It brings us closer to that -- but it's still no guarantee... That's why I would be perhaps considering other implementation scenarios -- but again, considering, not insisting on it.

Please accept my sincere apologies if you've found my reply arrogant. It was not my intention to offend you, or anyone.

Kind regards,
Tomasz

P.S. Having re-checked my e-mail I find that my reply to Prasad could indeed have been received as offensive. Again, that was not my intention. I simply recall being a student myself and trying to make sense of SAP. In the end making out business sense of the technology was most fun -- and that's what the whole IT industry is fighting with after the dot-com blast anyway... Prasad, I am sorry if you've found my reply offensive. I just found your situation quite typical and wanted to be a bit cynical about where we all are now.

-----Original Message-----
From: Balasubramaniam, Swaminathan [mailto:SBalasubramaniam at medrad.com]
Sent: Tuesday,20. May 2003 16:28
To: SAP-WUG at MITVMA.MIT.EDU
Subject: Re: Workitem requested start

Tomasz,
I appreciate your response. I also saw your response on how to see the whole forest than individual trees. If you cannot believe our business requirement of 10 minutes being realistic, you are probably seeing a individual tree and not the forest.

Thanks
Swami

-----Original Message-----
From: Zmudzin,Tomasz,VEVEY,GL-IS/IT [mailto:Tomasz.Zmudzin at nestle.com]
Sent: Tuesday, May 20, 2003 9:40 AM
To: SAP-WUG at MITVMA.MIT.EDU
Subject: Re: Workitem requested start

"Also it takes 59 seconds to complete the job. I guess, the requested start time triggers the job and the actual start is at the end of the job. So may be changing it to 8 minutes should work."

but when your systems gets cluttered, the longer response times will make (8
min+59 seconds) last longer :-) so your deadline will get processed on
min+the
next run (i.e. not in 9, but ~17 minutes).

Come on, I cannot believe setting 10 min deadlines is realistic. And if it is a business requirement -- the deadline job should anyway run more often than the deadline interval.

Kind regards,
Tomasz

-----Original Message-----
From: Balasubramaniam, Swaminathan [mailto:SBalasubramaniam at medrad.com]
Sent: Tuesday,20. May 2003 15:20
To: SAP-WUG at MITVMA.MIT.EDU
Subject: Re: Workitem requested start

Mike,
I got it now. The job in our case is scheduled as Adhoc. When I look for today, it seems like the job runs every 2 hours because of the other step I have for medium Notifications to set reminders every 2 hours. However, when I look at yesterday's job log, the job is scheduled more frequently. Also it takes 59 seconds to complete the job. I guess, the requested start time triggers the job and the actual start is at the end of the job. So may be changing it to 8 minutes should work. Please let me know if you guys have any other thought.

Thanks for all your help.
Swami

-----Original Message-----
From: Michael Pokraka [mailto:workflow at quirky.me.uk]
Sent: Tuesday, May 20, 2003 9:15 AM
To: SAP-WUG at MITVMA.MIT.EDU
Subject: Re: Workitem requested start

So... jsut set it to 8 minutes!
On a more serious note, your deadline granularity is determined by the scheduling of the monitor job SWWDHEX. If it runs ad hoc - i.e. when a deadline is due, then you'd be as accurate as your SAP scheduler can be - i.e. you may have a few seconds delay, or perhaps more f no bg processes are available. If it's scheduled periodically - e.g. every 5 minutes, then you can only be accurate to witin 5 minutes. If you have too many deadlines (as this type of sceanrio might suggest), then the first option becomes unfeasible as you may end up scheduling too many jobs - which may result in the minutes' delay you see - and you should rather go with periodic scheduling anyway.

HTH
Cheers
Mike

On Tue, May 20, 2003 at 09:02:15AM -0400, Balasubramaniam, Swaminathan
wrote:
> All,
> I have a step that has a requested start of nine minutes after the
> Work
item
> is created. However, the actual start is always 10 minutes. When I
> look in the log, it says requested start is 9 minutes after the work
> item creation time but the actual start is 10 minutes after the
> creation time. Is 10 minutes the minimum delay I can have or am I
> doing anything wrong. I am on
a
> 46B system.
>
>
> Thanks
> Swami