Question

User task outflows spontaneously out of order

Forms Version 10 Administration Business Processes Feature

Updated March 21, 2019

asked on March 21, 2019 • Show version history

Is anyone else having issues with User Tasks in Forms 10.* suddenly appearing out of order even though they were built and attached in a certain order? I built the tasks in the attached screenshot in the order of the blue numbers in the right side of each Outflow, with one being the first task and five, a default path if all other paths fail, as the last task. The tasks are now completely out of order.

I was just fixing a similar task in the same process and they moved midway through the changes again.

Also, a great feature would be the ability to drag and drop the Outflows to reorder them like the pagination in a form.

User Tasks Reorder During Build.jpeg (209.3 KB)

| Download

0 0

Replies

replied on March 21, 2019

It's best practice to always split and merge branches using a gateway instead of directly out of a user task. The way you have this, the branches out of the user task are acting like an inclusive gateway where any branch where the conditions are met is being followed. Because of that, the priority of the branches isn't important, any branch that has True conditions will be followed.

If that is the intended behavior, you should use an inclusive gateway after the user task to control the splitting. If you only intend for one outflow branch to be followed, you should use an exclusive gateway and the outflows can be rearranged and prioritized where the highest priority branch with a true condition will be followed.

1 0

replied on March 21, 2019

Jared,

Is this what you're describing? This is a different part of the same process and it has four possible outflows instead of five like in the first example that I shared.

There is a default path out of the user task to the exclusive gateway. Only one of the four paths can be taken. The default outflow of 'Assign Employee Type to Packet Error' exists so that I can fix things during testing without having to restart a test from scratch.

Is an exclusive gateway necessary when I have a very simple conditional user task such as selecting one button or another in the Error Correction User Task?

Thank you for your feedback.

John

Similar but revised task-exclusive gateway.jpeg (259.5 KB)

| Download

Error Correction User Task.jpeg (147.19 KB)

| Download

0 0

replied on March 21, 2019

Good practice is to always use a gateway for splitting. Use an exclusive gateway when only one outflow needs to be followed, or use an inclusive gateway if any number of outflows should be followed. Technically what you are doing will work, but it might be unclear to anyone else looking at the diagram what's going on. You also will run into trouble if a condition for one of the outflows is blank or if they are all blank.

As to your question about the order of the right pane for user tasks or inclusive gateways, I believe it should go from oldest outflow at the top down to newest outflow at the bottom. I'm not sure why they would have gotten reset, but we don't support rearranging them because the order doesn't matter during runtime.

0 0

You are not allowed to follow up in this post.

Question

Question

User task outflows spontaneously out of order

Replies

Sign in to reply to this post.