Deadline Monitoring

[Dart, Jocelyn]

Hi Manju,
It's Jocelyn by the way - Dart is my surname.
 
So someone turned deadline monitoring on in the old workflows but its never been used?  As deadline setting is part of the workflow configuration (transaction SWDD_CONFIG) options, why not just use this to turn off the deadline settings in the old workflows until they can be reviewed? That way you don't need to change the old workflows directly.  A look at table SWDSSTEPS will quickly show you which steps/tasks within the various workflows have a non-zero deadline setting.
 
I'd also suggest that you start getting the responsible business process owners for the different workflows affected to assess whether they want deadline monitoring or not for those workflows - presumably it was turned on for a reason.
 
Adjusting RSWWDHEX is possible but not easy, and there would of course be a performance impact in checking which workflow a deadline belonged to.
 
More importantly this table clears out all the old deadline references so if you restrict RSWWDHEX to just your workflow you never clear the deadlines being added by the old workflows. So deadline monitoring will just get slower and slower if other workflows are still adding entries to the deadline tables.
 
I'm thinking perhaps you should at least look at the deadline monitoring run time instance table SWWIDH before you retest your workflow - you may find the deadlines being raised are just really old references from old workflows - in which case you could clear out the old entries from this table before starting your workflow in production.
Regards,
        Jocelyn Dart
Consultant (SRM, EBP, Workflow)
and co-author of the book
"Practical Workflow for SAP"
SAP Australia
email: jocelyn.dart at sap.com
phone: +61 412 390 267
fax:   +61 2 9935 4880
 
 
 
 
 
-----Original Message-----
From: Manju Thangudu [mailto:manjuwf at yahoo.co.in]
Sent: Tuesday,21 October 2003 1:35 AM
To: SAP-WUG at MITVMA.MIT.EDU
Subject: Re: Deadline Monitoring
 
 
Thanks Dart.
 
But the problem is as follows:
1.  Our company is using Workflow for many years (SAP provided).  But without the deadline monitoring scheduled.  The users are not used to the deadline monitored workflow items/reminders etc.
2.  If i now schedule the deadline monitoring (yes i saw in the book and it could not be easier) the SAP workflows being used in the past are responding to the Deadline monitoring.
 
This being the problem I am attempting to copy the deadline montoring program and add variants to it so that I can restrict it to each workflow.  Your opinions on that idea would be appreciated.
 
kind regards
manju
 
"Dart, Jocelyn" <jocelyn.dart at sap.com> wrote:
Hi Monique,
Yes deadline monitoring applies to all workflows. But then if any of the other workflows wer using deadline monitoring they would have already turned the deadline monitoring job on. So turning on the deadline monitoring job for your workflow should not impact any existing workflows - only your workflow and any future workflow that decides to use deadline monitoring, which is exactly what should happen. The deadline approach you are using is easily covered by the standard deadline monitoring.
 
You certainly do not need to use your own technique here - that just adds to workflow build costs and makes the workflow more difficult to understand, maintain, and upgrade in future - particularly if another workflow consultant has to enhance your workflow when you have moved on to another job/role.
 
Suggest you make sure you use periodic deadline monitoring in production to prevent too many batch jobs being created.
There's really very little to setting up deadline monitoring - it is explained in the book what you need to do and there is further information in the SAP Library help.
Regards,
Jocelyn Dart
Consultant (SRM, EBP, Workflow)
and co-author of the book
"Practical Workflow for SAP"
SAP Australia
email: jocelyn.dart at sap.com
phone: +61 412 390 267
fax: +61 2 9935 4880
 
 
 
 
-----Original Message-----
From: Manju Thangudu [mailto:manjuwf at yahoo.co.in]
Sent: Saturday,18 October 2003 6:53 AM
To: SAP-WUG at MITVMA.MIT.EDU
Subject: Re: Deadline Monitoring
 
 
Task Deadline - Go to the task in the workflow step->requested start date-> key in the time delay you wish for that task. When you execute the workflow this task will show on SWI1 as a task in 'Wating'.
 
Externally the deadline monitoring job needs to be turned on to monitor these in status, evaluate and kick them off. The path for that is Tools-> bus wf->Development ->adminsitration->workflow runtime->Workitem deadliine monitoring-> (transactions in particular are swwa and swwb.
 
****CAUTION***** if deadline montoring was not on and you are going to turn on consider that it applies to all workflows. So you would impact all preexisting workflows in production.
 
Due to this reason I had opted to do a different thing.
 
1. Using the Task level delayed start feature i put the work item in WAITING status.
2. I have a job scheduled to read all waiting workitems associated with my specific workflow and evaluate. If overdue i have send the appropriate workitem and complete the workitem.
"Stephens, Monique S L" wrote:
Is there anyone that can give me some good instructions on deadline
monitoring and how to set it up? I have the Practical Workflow for SAP book
but did not find a lot of information on it. We are currently on version
4.6C.
 
Monique Stephens
SAP Analyst
Baylor College of Medicine
713-798-1349
713-798-1326 (FAX)
 
 
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