Advance With Dialog on Asynchronous Task

Tue Jun 30 17:40:16 EDT 2015

Hi Loren
Yes you are allowed to have a terminating event for a synch task. However that gives you an alternative to normal completion & normal completion will still also complete the task.

I agree direct updates aren't ideal but from what you have shown your hack is fairly careful.  That said it is difficult to assess any knock on problems  that could occur so be *very* thorough in your testing.

You may have problems with LUW (logical unit of work) conflicts as for most transactions the actual updates are performed in the update task separate from (even though usually immediately after) the transaction itself. Eg If your system is running slow you may see issues where user swears blind they completed it, doc is complete, but workflow does not continue because your completion check happened milliseconds before the update itself.

By the way someone changing the doc outside the workflow to completed is legitimate - eg what happens if someone needs to intervene manually to complete the doc... Usually you want the workflow to continue.

If you are concerned about someone other than the approver changing it then you need to check who changed it - which again would be easier with an event as that holds the event creator.

So in short.... There's good reasons for the method being asynch.  We would usually look for an approved synch such as a BAPI.

Appreciate what you are trying to do just making sure you have your eyes open to potential problems

Rgds
Jocelyn

Sent from my iPhone with many apologies for the spelling, grammar and any other deficiencies

On 1 Jul 2015, at 6:55 am, Ramki Maley <rmaley at erpworkflow.com<mailto:rmaley at erpworkflow.com>> wrote:

Loren,

I think you are allowed to have a terminating event for a synchronous task. That should take care of change outside workflow. You don't need any hacks other than a synchronous edit method.
It is worth a try. Not a good practice to update SAP tables directly ;-) .

Cheers,
Ramki.

On 6/30/15, 3:24 PM, Bratzler, Loren wrote:
Ramki,

Even if I put the status check in the “Complete Execution” condition, there is still the chance that someone could change the document status to “complete” between the time it is entered and when the approver acts upon it.  Once that status is changed to “complete”, I would not be able to use that as a way to know that it is OK to advance to the next step.

So now, I have come up with another hack that so far, appears to work for every scenario I can think of.  It involves setting the status of the document back to “parked” before launching the MIR4 t-code.  Then when we come back from MIR4, I check it again to see if the status has been changed to “complete”:

begin_method zedit changing container.

DATA: lv_status        TYPE rbkp-rbstat.

SELECT SINGLE rbstat
  FROM rbkp
  INTO lv_status
 WHERE belnr = object-key-invoicedocnumber
   AND gjahr = object-key-fiscalyear.

IF lv_status = 'B'.
  UPDATE rbkp
     SET rbstat = 'A'
   WHERE belnr = object-key-invoicedocnumber
     AND gjahr = object-key-fiscalyear.
ENDIF.

PERFORM edit IN PROGRAM rbus2081 TABLES container CHANGING swo_%invoke.

SELECT SINGLE rbstat
  FROM rbkp
  INTO lv_status
 WHERE belnr = object-key-invoicedocnumber
   AND gjahr = object-key-fiscalyear.

IF lv_status <> 'B'.   " Completed
  exit_cancelled.
ENDIF.

end_method.

Note that I could not figure out how to get the SWC_CALL_METHOD to work so I am using the PERFORM option instead.  It seems to work fine.

Loren Bratzler
Norfolk Southern Corporation

From: sap-wug-bounces at mit.edu<mailto:sap-wug-bounces at mit.edu> [mailto:sap-wug-bounces at mit.edu] On Behalf Of Ramki Maley
Sent: Tuesday, June 30, 2015 1:34 PM
To: SAP Workflow Users' Group
Subject: [EXTERNAL] Re: Advance With Dialog on Asynchronous Task

Hi Loren,

A better option might be to test the status in the  'Complete Execution' Condition for the step. Not sure if that will break the dialog chain. you can easily test it.

And for the other question, the answer is SWC_CALL_METHOD <Object> <Method> <Container>.

Cheers,
Ramki.

On 6/30/15, 9:28 AM, Bratzler, Loren wrote:
Hey Jocelyn, hope you are doing well!

Thinking about what you said and what Ramki said, I found a hack for my custom method that appears to work where I check the status of the document after returning from the t-code call:

begin_method zedit changing container.

DATA: lv_status TYPE rbkp-rbstat.

DATA: xwfla1 LIKE boole-boole VALUE 'X'.                    "Note916729
SET PARAMETER ID 'RBN' FIELD object-key-invoicedocnumber.
SET PARAMETER ID 'GJR' FIELD object-key-fiscalyear.
SET PARAMETER ID 'CHG' FIELD 'X'.
EXPORT xwfla1 TO MEMORY ID 'FIENJOYWF'.                     "Note916729
CALL TRANSACTION 'MIR4' AND SKIP FIRST SCREEN.

SELECT SINGLE rbstat
  FROM rbkp
  INTO lv_status
 WHERE belnr = object-key-invoicedocnumber
   AND gjahr = object-key-fiscalyear.

IF lv_status <> 'B'.    " Completed
  exit_cancelled.
ENDIF.

end_method.

The obvious downside to this is if someone happens to change the document status to “completed” outside of workflow via the normal backend MIR4 screen.  We do have an enhancement implementation on the MIR4 screen where I might be able to control the “save as complete” button to only be allowed by the workflow approver.  If I can make that work, then this approach may work for us.

One more question for anyone:  This custom method, ZEDIT, is a copy of the standard method, EDIT.  Is there a way to call the standard method from my custom method so that I don’t have to duplicate the code being executed?

Loren Bratzler
Norfolk Southern Corporation

From: sap-wug-bounces at mit.edu<mailto:sap-wug-bounces at mit.edu> [mailto:sap-wug-bounces at mit.edu] On Behalf Of Dart, Jocelyn
Sent: Monday, June 29, 2015 4:54 PM
To: SAP Workflow Users' Group
Subject: [EXTERNAL] Re: Advance With Dialog on Asynchronous Task

Hi Loren
Ok so this is why that method was originally asynchronous as with a transaction the std way to find out if the work was done is to listen for a terminating event.

So Catch-22.

Maybe see if there is a BAPI that lets you do a synchronous call.

Is creating your own alternative UI in SAPUI5 or WDA to control the edit a possible option?
Rgds
Jocelyn

Sent from my iPhone with many apologies for the spelling, grammar and any other deficiencies

On 30 Jun 2015, at 5:28 am, Bratzler, Loren <Loren.Bratzler at nscorp.com<mailto:Loren.Bratzler at nscorp.com>> wrote:
I’m not sure how I am going to be able to tell from within the EDIT method if the document is “COMPLETE” or not.  The method code is executing transaction MIR4 directly like this:

  begin_method edit changing container.

  DATA: xwfla1 LIKE boole-boole VALUE 'X'.                  "Note916729
  SET PARAMETER ID 'RBN' FIELD object-key-invoicedocnumber.
  SET PARAMETER ID 'GJR' FIELD object-key-fiscalyear.
  SET PARAMETER ID 'CHG' FIELD 'X'.
  EXPORT xwfla1 TO MEMORY ID 'FIENJOYWF'.                   "Note916729
  CALL TRANSACTION 'MIR4' AND SKIP FIRST SCREEN.

  end_method.

Loren

From: sap-wug-bounces at mit.edu<mailto:sap-wug-bounces at mit.edu> [mailto:sap-wug-bounces at mit.edu] On Behalf Of Ramki Maley
Sent: Thursday, June 25, 2015 6:02 PM
To: SAP Workflow Users' Group
Subject: [EXTERNAL] Re: Advance With Dialog on Asynchronous Task

Loren,

Instead of a terminating event for your custom EDIT method, Try issuing an EXIT_CANCELLED if the document is not 'COMPLETE'. This will keep the workitem from completing.

Cheers,
Ramki.
On 6/25/15, 1:58 PM, Bratzler, Loren wrote:
Hello Wuggers,

Hope someone can help me here:

I have a requirement in a workflow to have a two-part approval process for the Incoming Invoice (BUS2081) business object.  The first part of the approval process is to have the approver open the document in Edit mode and review and make revisions to a restricted number of fields.  Once their review is done, we want them to click “Save as Complete” and then automatically advance to the second part of the approval process where the user decision (approve or reject buttons) appear.

For the first step of the process, I am using the standard EDIT method of the object and when I define my task for using this method, I assign the terminating event “COMPLETED” so that the task will only complete when the user clicks “Save as Complete”.

The problem is that the EDIT method for this object is asynchronous:

<image001.png>

So the “advance with dialog” option does not work to automatically advance to the user decision step where the approve/reject buttons will appear.

I tried to create my own custom synchronous method in the object that was a copy of the standard method.  I then created a new task to execute this new method and defined the same terminating event.  However, the problem with that is when I insert the task into the workflow, there are two outcome paths.  One path is for the terminating event I assigned but the other path is the normal “advance” path.  This causes the workflow to advance to the user decision step when we don’t want it to.  We only want it to advance when they click “save as complete” and raise the COMPLETED event.  With this configuration, the step advances when they click other options on the screen like “back”, “exit” or “cancel”.

<image002.png>

The workflow builder will not allow me to deactivate the “Step executed” outcome for the step:

<image003.png>

Error message that occurs when you try to deactivate this outcome:

<image004.png>

So I’m trying to figure out is there some way for me to get around these limitations?

Loren Bratzler
Norfolk Southern Corporation

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