The simple synchronization sequence is not intended as a locking mechanism. And it is definitely not meant to prevent another workflow from accessing an entry for the entire duration of the current one. It is meant as a temporary very short lived lock to handle the situation where multiple workflows are trying to access the same entry at the same time.

In the case where multiple actions are trying to lock the document at the same time, one of the actions succeeds in the Laserfiche server, the other get "entry locked" errors. The Workflow activities that get this error then wait for 5 minutes (or whatever wait period you specify in the Task Error Handlers in WF Admin Console) and then retry the action. If they get an error again, they wait and retry again until the action succeeds or the maximum number of retries is hit.

Some customers have complained that waiting for a few minutes it too long, and they'd like it to retry almost immediately. So the simple synchronization sequence gives you an immediate retry mechanism. If the action cannot be completed after the specified time, it goes through the regular retrying mechanism (aka, the task error handlers).

Unlike the task error handlers which persist the instance while waiting, the simple synchronization sequences are in-memory locks that will slow down your Workflow server's performance if used excessively.

Maybe you can describe your use case in more detail so we can give you a better solution/recommendation?

Miruna Babatie

Software Test Engineer

Laserfiche