Question

Prevent Recursive Workflows

Workflow

Updated June 28, 2024

asked on March 24, 2016

I finally got my first workflow to fire which also happened to be runaway workflow which was emailing me at each loop. Exciting to say the least.

I finally got it stopped and am now working on the line to add to the starting rules to prevent this. I have seen where you add "User does not equal Workflow" and want to do this. My problem is that I am not sure exactly what user to put there. The workflow services are running under a windows account called SRV_Laserfiche. This is the same account that the main LF service uses, as well as the one that is used to access the sql server databases.

The workflow seems to be running under our LF admin account (actually called "admin") but I am not exactly sure where this value is set. I do not want to use this admin user account as we use it for other things so I created another account called WFUser2 which is basically a duplicate of the admin account. I changed to this new account in the "Monitored Repositories" section in Workflow Configuration Manager but now I get the following error : "Connection to the Workflow Server could not be created".

What do I need to do to the WFUser2 account to get it to monitor the repositories correctly?

Thanks,
Kent

P.S. I created the WFUser2 because I was worried about conflicting with WFUser$ if I called it WFUser. I am not exactly sure how that works and would like to just use WFUser$ if I could but don't see that account anywhere nor know the password.

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Answer

SELECTED ANSWER

replied on March 24, 2016

Click on the Workflow canvas in the middle pane of the Workflow Designer so the Properties pane on the right changes to the properties of the entire workflow. You should see a section for the connection profile. See what user is listed there. That's the user this Workflow rule uses to connect to the repository to perform the actions specified by your activities. This use should be the one excluded from the starting rule.

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Replies

replied on March 24, 2016

If I'm understanding you correctly, what you want in the rule is this:

User does not equal wfuser

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replied on March 24, 2016

But I do not think my workflow is running under the WFUser account. To help with troubleshooting I added %(Initiator) in the body of email the workflow sends out to see who is initiating the job. When I go in and change the specific document the runaway workflow starts and I see in the first email that it is from my logged in LF account but each additional email is from "admin".

I could just place "User does not equal admin" and it would probably work, but I do not want it to be admin. How/where do I change the setting so the workflow runs under WFUser$ or my new WFUser2 instead of admin.

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replied on March 30, 2016

Thank you. I assumed there was a "master" account you set to run workflows under and didn't realize that setting was even there. I was able to use that to set the workflow to the new account I made and the recursion went away and left me with a properly functioning workflow.

I'm still not sure I completely understand what the WFUser$ account is or how to use it but my WF is running now.

Thank you for your assistance. Much appreciated!

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replied on March 30, 2016

WFUser$ is only used by the Subscriber. It's not accessible for connection profiles in the Workflow Designer.

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replied on June 28, 2024

Hello Miruna,

Please can you help shed light on this:
Is there any reason to specify User does not equal workflow in the Workflow Rule?

Whats the significance?

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replied on June 28, 2024

Individual workflow definitions use a repository user for their connection profile. This user does not need to be a named user nor does it consume a license when Workflow connects to the repository. However, this is just another user in the repository, so Workflow own action on documents will be evaluated against rules and wait conditions.

So for example if you have a starting rule that act on a document change and calls a workflow that modifies the document further, that modification also counts as a document change. This second document change would be evaluated against the starting rule. If all conditions are satisfied, a new instance of workflow would start. Which would modify the document again and generate a new notification of activity and so on. Excluding the user from the connection profile indicates to Workflow that its own changes should not be counted.

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Prevent Recursive Workflows

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