Starting a Process from a SAIL interface and chaining

RE: Starting a Process from a SAIL interface and chaining

Jin Pheh — Wed, 05 Jun 2024 13:07:09 GMT

I find it amusing that 6 years after the fact we're still seeing this behavior.

RE: Starting a Process from a SAIL interface and chaining

javicamara — Wed, 05 Jun 2024 12:52:48 GMT

It is difficult to tell, but the truth is that usually the expected value is returned - except sometimes, coinciding with the first time you made the call after a long time. I.e.:

- Today around 9:30 I called the WebAPI, and it did not return the value

- Immediately after that I made the call again with the same parameters, and it returned the value

- Same after several other trials

In call call the same parameters and functionally were used, and in the Process Activity everything looked just the same in all cases. To me it sounds like there is a "warm up" due to the first time you use the stuff, that causes a delay that can surpass some internal timeout.

RE: Starting a Process from a SAIL interface and chaining

Mathieu Drouin — Wed, 05 Jun 2024 11:30:24 GMT

Are you sure that you are not breaking the chain inadvertently somewhere?

RE: Starting a Process from a SAIL interface and chaining

javicamara — Wed, 05 Jun 2024 09:28:29 GMT

We have encountered the same now, in 2024 and in Appian 24.1 . It seems that, if the process takes more than some timeout that we can't define, startProcess returns even though the activity chaining is properly configured and it has not finished.

However, in our trials we have seen that apparently, when startProcess returns, it brings the process variable values that the process has in that moment, even not finished. Thanks to that, in our case a workaround to this behavior has been to obtain these values early in the process, so that the WebAPI that starts it has them even if the process has not completed (which is somewhat overoptimistic, but well, it is better than having no value at all).

Since the documentation for startProcess does not match the behavior of the smart service, I think that either the documentation should be changed to reflect all this (and prevent incidents from happening to application users, and developers from spending time in investigating solutions), or the smart service should be changed to honor the documentation.

RE: Starting a Process from a SAIL interface and chaining

Mathieu Drouin — Thu, 06 Feb 2020 16:26:04 GMT

Jin Pheh I seem to be encountering a similar issue. Did you ever find out what it was?

RE: Starting a Process from a SAIL interface and chaining

josep — Mon, 06 Aug 2018 05:57:19 GMT

Hello Jpheh,

I have done that chaining using starProcessLink and it works as expected all the time. The start process definitely will no respect the activity chaining.

I would recommend you to make the following tests. It might not be your use case but it definitely should display the screens. Add a form with a button (nothing else) at two points of your process.assigned to the process initiators.

Using the startProcessLink
1) at the beginning (start processing)
2) at the end for the process (before the process return

I have some questions, are you from tempo? Or a site? Does all the process run without errors? How much time takes your process to execute ? Are all the tasks assigned to the same user there are some factors that can break the chain.

José

RE: Starting a Process from a SAIL interface and chaining

chandu — Sat, 04 Aug 2018 15:18:47 GMT

Yeah thats what I'm wondering I have generated a word document through SAIL Interface.
@Jpheh will it be possible to share the screen shot of your PM

RE: Starting a Process from a SAIL interface and chaining

Arpit Bhargava — Sat, 04 Aug 2018 14:07:41 GMT

Hi,

There is the difference in the a!startProcess() and a!startProcessLink().
a!startProcess() works as asynchronously where as a!startProcessLink() work as synchronously

RE: Starting a Process from a SAIL interface and chaining

Mike Schmitt — Fri, 03 Aug 2018 19:49:32 GMT

I've done this before (to generate an exported Excel report from a Record summary), but as far as I observed, chaining was honored. What leads you to believe that it's not in your case?

RE: Starting a Process from a SAIL interface and chaining

Jin Pheh — Fri, 03 Aug 2018 18:09:17 GMT

It doesn't return anything of value and to be honest I don't care about it - I am just looking for the chained nodes in the process to complete before the SAIL form considers the saveInto action completes.

Right now the saveInto (ie the a!startProcess call) is returning before all nodes in the process are done.

RE: Starting a Process from a SAIL interface and chaining

chandu — Fri, 03 Aug 2018 18:03:26 GMT

how could you say that the processinfo is returning before the chain completes?

RE: Starting a Process from a SAIL interface and chaining

Jin Pheh — Fri, 03 Aug 2018 17:53:24 GMT

> If a chained flow encounters an attended activity, the activity will be assigned to the user that the Start Process smart service was run as, but it will not open the associated form.

While accurate this doesn't apply in my situation - I'm running a headless (unattended) process so this doesn't matter.

RE: Starting a Process from a SAIL interface and chaining

Jin Pheh — Fri, 03 Aug 2018 17:52:33 GMT

> From the start node the smart service will follow the activity chaining. Once the activity chain breaks or the flow completes, then only the processInfo will get the value, that is what we get in fv!processInfo.

Yes, this is my understanding as well however this is not what I'm seeing happen. processInfo is returning before the chain completes. I have validated that the chain is unbroken and that no error occurred.

RE: Starting a Process from a SAIL interface and chaining

chandu — Fri, 03 Aug 2018 17:50:29 GMT

In the documentation they clearly mentioned the point like,

If a chained flow encounters an attended activity, the activity will be assigned to the user that the Start Process smart service was run as, but it will not open the associated form.

The start process link is introduced in latest version of Appian, I could not remember which version of Appian they have introduced. But I believe the a!startProcess is available before a!startProcessLink. They come up with the functionality where the user can trigger a process from SAIL with chained forms.

RE: Starting a Process from a SAIL interface and chaining

chandu — Fri, 03 Aug 2018 17:43:34 GMT

Please correct me if my understanding is wrong. From the documentation What I understand is a!startProcess() "This smart service follows activity-chaining, completing only when the activity chain is complete or broken. The smart service then returns the process variables as of the completion of activity chaining through the processInfo.pv output."

From the start node the smart service will follow the activity chaining. Once the activity chain breaks or the flow completes, then only the processInfo will get the value, that is what we get in fv!processInfo.

RE: Starting a Process from a SAIL interface and chaining

Jin Pheh — Fri, 03 Aug 2018 17:38:35 GMT

> Could you please let us know your detailed requirement? we will try to suggest the possible approaches.

There is a Record view that displays data and I'm trying to offer an inline method of updating the data. The update in question requires more than I can achieve using just saveInto so I externalized the update into a process model.

I realize I can achieve the same thing using a related action but the UX of doing this feels extremely clunky and is something I am aiming to avoid.

As I mentioned in my original post, using a link (ie: a!startProcessLink) works as expected - I'm just trying to figure out why startProcessLink and startProcess work differently.

RE: Starting a Process from a SAIL interface and chaining

Jin Pheh — Fri, 03 Aug 2018 17:30:05 GMT

Hey Chandu,

I agree that the doc you listed says it only works asynchronously however the documentation for a!startProcess() explicitly says that it respects activity chaining when starting a process from an interface

docs.appian.com/.../Start_Process_Smart_Service.html

Is this a problem with the docs and I happened to pick the bad one?

RE: Starting a Process from a SAIL interface and chaining

chandu — Fri, 03 Aug 2018 17:26:42 GMT

Hi Jpheh,
As per the documentation below,That is an expected behaviour.
docs.appian.com/.../Ways_to_Start_a_Process_From_a_Process.html

In the a!startProcess()

onSuccess: you can get the pv values from the function variable fv!processInfo

for more info please refer documentation

docs.appian.com/.../Start_Process_Smart_Service.html

Could you please let us know your detailed requirement? we will try to suggest the possible approaches.