Question

Forms Escalation Process

Forms

Updated November 20, 2015

asked on November 18, 2015

I am looking for a way to Escalate a process in Forms using the process Modeler. The current process has 3 approval steps. I am currently using the 'Intermediate Timer Event' attached to an event to re-send a notification if the task is not complete after 2 days. This is working great!

The issue I'm having is when it comes to an escalation - In the event that a user does not act on a task within 5 days (3 days after Intermediate Timer), The form should progress and move onto the next User Task in the process. I am able to achieve this, but the task for the previous Approval is still present and the Form shows as In-Progress until that task is completed. See Image below to better clarify:

Example: 1st Approver does not act within 2 days, another notification email is sent to the user to remind him/her of pending approval. If this user does NOT act within another 3 days (5 days total), the process should SKIP the 1st approval, and go onto the 2nd approval. This would also mark the 1st approval as 'Interrupted' like it does for the ReSend Event.

Note: This works without the 2 Timer events, but I cannot get it to function as expected with 2 timer events.

Any help is much appreciated!

Cheers,

Nate

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replied on November 18, 2015

Nate, on the "Next Approver after 5 Days" timer event, do you have the "Interrupt the attached activity" checkbox checked?

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replied on November 18, 2015

I do, when it is unchecked, the icon looks like this:

To test, I'm using 1 minute and 2 minute increments - Do you think this could have anything to do with it? A timing issue?!?

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replied on November 18, 2015

I suspect your first timer, the 1 minute one, would fire, interrupt the activity, and start it again with a new clock. Therefore the 2 minute escalation timer never fires because the length never reaches two minutes without being interrupted.

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replied on November 18, 2015

I suspect Carl is right. So for your Re-send After 2 Days timer, you would need to send it to another user task rather than the original. Then off of that one, set a timer for 3 days and send that one to 2nd Approval.

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replied on November 19, 2015

Carl, the 2 minute escalation timer does fire, but I think it has to do with timing, because the 1st fires, then 2nd fires and that's why I'm seeing both activities. I was trying to avoid having two user tasks because this means I have to update both when changing anything, but I will give it a try.

Thanks Blake & Carl for your help!

Nate

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replied on November 20, 2015 • Show version history

Ah I tested this out myself and see what you mean. Using 5min interval for reminder and 15min interval for escalation it follows out as such.

Timeline after submitall

0 - Initial notice goes out and clocks start

5 - The reminder 5m Timer fires and approval task is restarted

10 - The reminder 5m Timer fires and approval task is restarted

15 - The 15m timer fires and escalation task starts, but appears to collide with the 5m timer and Approval task is not interrupted.

This leaves the escalated task and the reminded task still open due to that collision you were mentioning.

Changing timers to 5 and 18 however results in the similar behavior. The only difference is it does fully execute the 5m reminder 3 times and interrupts the Approval activity to launch a new one.

However, this new approval created by the last 5 min timer is not interrupted by the 18m escalation timer. This leads me to believe that the second timer is creating it's own independent thread and for some reason cannot cancel the thread established by the first reminder timer event.

The running times of the 18 however is different than I would expect. It fires correctly 18min after the initial submission but the task history shows it not starting until after the first 5 min reminder fired which makes it appear to only have ran for 13 minutes.

*updated picture

My conclusion is having a 2nd timer on the same activity produces a separate thread where the 2nd activity can't locate the re-created approval step to interrupt but will still proceed with the escalation.

Something like what Blake suggests would be the way to work around this.

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replied on November 20, 2015

Oddly enough while the original Approval activity remains, the 5min timer stops repeating once the 18min timer fires. So the timer is interupted but not the Approval task.

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replied on November 20, 2015

Yeah, it's definitely odd, but as you mentioned - I think it's a timing thing! I'd love to get some feedback from someone at Laserfiche to make sure we're using it correctly and/or have correct expectations of the timer events. Thanks for your help Carl!

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Forms Escalation Process

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