Does anyone know when assignment rules are evaluated?
We have an expression rule that returns a Group based on a set of parameters. This expression rule can be used for swimlane assignments, attended task assignments and for process model alerts. In order to make most efficient use of this expression rule (and understand the trade-offs between various options) we are keen to know when/if the rule would be evaluated for each of these scenarios.
E.g.
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Rules that are called within the assignment tab of the swim lane are only evaluated when attended nodes within that lane are reached. Likewise alert expressions are only evaluated when alerts are generated.
Agree with the others that the assignment expression is evaluated at task start time, regardless of if it is in the node assignment tab or in the swim lane assignment. So with either configuration, if the group is updated and the task restarts later, it will utilize the new assignee set.
I assume the same for the process model alerts recipients, although we have never tested - all our alerts come to system admins only.
You could test this out by creating a simple model with a script task with a bad expression such as "=if(true,false)" (incorrect number of parameters). Start the process for debugging, not the recipients, update the group, manually start the bad node again in the active/test process to see if the recipients changed.
These are some good questions.