Process Model is running every time when I re-start Appian services

RE: Process Model is running every time when I re-start Appian services

Chris — Wed, 26 Jul 2023 21:14:58 GMT

Since Appian's native behavior is to start a process automatically upon restart if it missed a scheduled start time, you will need to control this manually via the constant suggestions above.

RE: Process Model is running every time when I re-start Appian services

Chris — Wed, 26 Jul 2023 21:10:22 GMT

[quote userid="50400" url="~/discussions/f/new-to-appian/29463/process-model-is-running-every-time-when-i-re-start-appian-services/116828#116828"]Are changes to such a constant picked up live, or only after the process model is republished? I know with a timer value stored in a constant, changes are only picked up after republishing, but not sure about the timer condition one.[/quote]

Yes, changes to the constant are picked up live in the Timer Conditions. When I deploy a scheduled process to another environment, I'll deploy the constant (set as unique values on each server) along with it, set to false in the Import Customization File, then flip it back manually on the destination server after import (or you can re-deploy only the constant set to true).

Additionally I built out an "Admin Console" in our COE which has a function to change constant values. All (most) of my start condition constants are in here, and I can toggle them on and off via GUI and the processes will behave appropriately. I also have constants in there that do things like, stop reads/writes to some external databases we manage. When those are planned to have an outage, I flip the constant via the console, and all processes wait cleanly until I toggle it back after maintenance is complete.

To note you are correct on storing the timer start dateTime in a constant, in this situation the change is not realized by the process until re-published (I'm positive I have an enhancement request logged for that somewhere a lonngg while ago..)

RE: Process Model is running every time when I re-start Appian services

swapnar6405 — Wed, 26 Jul 2023 17:15:00 GMT

I just want to run the processes as per the scheduled time not at any other time including services re-start.

RE: Process Model is running every time when I re-start Appian services

Mike Schmitt — Wed, 26 Jul 2023 16:04:01 GMT

Are changes to such a constant picked up live, or only after the process model is republished? I know with a timer value stored in a constant, changes are only picked up after republishing, but not sure about the timer condition one.

RE: Process Model is running every time when I re-start Appian services

Chris — Wed, 26 Jul 2023 15:59:02 GMT

Note that if you use your constant in the Timer Conditions under Advanced Options, you can avoid the extra XOR node and the process will not start at all if set to false:

RE: Process Model is running every time when I re-start Appian services

Harsh Kumar Agarwal — Wed, 26 Jul 2023 10:05:36 GMT

An addition to the answer that whenever Appian services restart or a PM deploys to a next environment it triggers a new instance for all the scheduled process models. It is good to use an XOR gateway after the start node and check your constant value is true or not. It should only go to the main flow if it true else to the terminate node. Keep value of constant false when you restart the services or push to next environment and later change it to true.

RE: Process Model is running every time when I re-start Appian services

Chris — Tue, 25 Jul 2023 17:53:20 GMT

Just to clarify, this should only occur if your services were shut down during the scheduled start time, then once your services are online it will start the 'missed' scheduled process. Restarting Appian should not trigger any process that did not miss a scheduled run.

In general, Gabriele's suggestion of using a boolean constant in the Timer Conditions (under Advanced Options) is what I always use to prevent processes from starting during imports/deployments to another environment. This will work for restarts as well but you will have to change the constant to false before the environment shuts down.

Do you restart regularly? Do you want this process to never run after it misses a schedule due to being offline or only sometimes skip a run, etc?

RE: Process Model is running every time when I re-start Appian services

Gabriele Camilli — Tue, 25 Jul 2023 14:18:30 GMT

Hi, i can suggest to add a constant as a condition on the timer
Before imports or restarting, set the constant to false so that the trigger is deactivated and after the action set it to true so that when the times comes the trigger is active