Transient workflows

[#1]

Sometimes, workflows may be launched only to be aborted by the launcher. Historically, this would result in lingering work items and/or workflowcases that might never be closed. IdentityIQ 6.1 introduces the concept of "transient workflows" -- workflows that create no persisted artifacts until the workflow has to pause (e.g. the workflow is backgrounded or a workflow form has to be presented to someone other than the workflow launcher).

The transient workflow concept was initial created to support the self-service registration option, preventing a proliferation of abandoned work items in the event that users attempted to self-register to IdentityIQ and aborted the registration process before they submitted the form for approval.  It has proven useful in any circumstance where an initiating user could abort a workflow process with the desired resulting action being for IdentityIQ to behave as if the workflow were never launched.

Consider the example of a quickLink that launches a workflow to present a form to the user.  If a user clicks that quicklink and then discovers they don't want to complete the form, they would click "cancel" on the form. A traditional workflow would save the form as a work item in the user's inbox and leave the workflowcase in a pending state, awaiting action by the user that they might never take.  Marking the workflow as transient means that when the user clicks "cancel", the workflowcase disappears and no work item is created for the launcher at all.

To make a workflow transient, declare a process variable for it called "transient" and set it to true.

     <Workflow name="Vanishing Workflow" ...>

          <Variable name="transient" initializer="true"/>

[shaheen_badiyan]

Thanks, menno.pieters​. That would work only if the user clicks on the Cancel button. You would still be able to navigate to a different page and the workflow will persist.

[menno_pieters]

Yes, but in that case, they can still open the workitem and then cancel.

- Menno

[shaheen_badiyan]

No. For now I'm just having the user click the cancel button to terminate the workflow.

[#5]

I have tried adding this variable to the LCM Provisioning workflow in both 6.3p3 and 6.4, but it doesn't seem to make a difference. I still get a work item when I cancel out of a provisioning form. Maybe I'm missing something. 

[janmejay_vishwakarma]

Hi Menno,

I have same scenario where user clicks on Quicklinks and don't submit or cancel the form and directly navigate other stuff and they never come back to hit the cancel button on the workitem and due to that we have thousands of orphaned workitem in the system and very hard to clean up.

do you have any suggestion here.

Thanks

Jay

[menno_pieters]

Two things:

• Make sure that the workflows causing that become "transient"
• Go to Debug, select all workflowcase and workitem objects older than (say) 2-3 months and delete.

[janmejay_vishwakarma]

Thanks Menno,

I already wrote a rule to delete old workitem, workflowcase and associated taskResults for my clean up.

I will try transient again and see.

Thanks

Janmejay

[subhash_saripella]

Hi,

I have added <Variable name="transient" initializer="true"> in my workflow but the workitem is being created even if the form is cancelled. Any Ideas??

Thanks

[subhash_saripella]

we are on 6.3 p7 version.

[jennifer_mitchell]

The conditions which are required to abort workflow creation are these:

1. The form which is being "Canceled" must be presented to the user who took the action that caused the workflow to launch (e.g. clicked the quicklink, made the LCM request, etc.) and this must occur before any other activity which would cause the workflow to be persisted. For example, the workflow cannot first present a form to a second user, or execute a wait step, or execute a step with a "background" argument set to true.
2. The action of the button they click must be "Cancel".

If you believe your workflow meets these requirements, please post the workflow (in its entirety or just up to the step you are trying to cancel) in the Forum space here on Compass for further help.