What is difference between end event and a terminate the event?

RE: What is difference between end event and a terminate the event?

Chris — Tue, 24 Jan 2023 16:24:19 GMT

[quote userid="86435" url="~/discussions/f/process/19600/what-is-difference-between-end-event-and-a-terminate-the-event/107047#107047"]Can we have 2 or more terminal end nodes in our process, or does it defy best practises? [/quote]

You can have as many terminating end events in your process model as you need, AFAIK there is no best practice to limit the amount of these nodes (other than keeping your total count of nodes less than 50). I will add them based on organization, if there is no end event nearby in the modeler to use, I'll add another instead of running a path across multiple swim lanes to get to one, etc.

RE: What is difference between end event and a terminate the event?

Aaryan — Tue, 24 Jan 2023 14:19:59 GMT

Can we have 2 or more terminal end nodes in our process, or does it defy best practises?

RE: What is difference between end event and a terminate the event?

Chris — Wed, 23 Sep 2020 16:02:25 GMT

Sub process O&M is a great example - with a non-terminating end event, after restarting a node you have to ensure to cancel the error instance of the node as well (or edit to terminating end event as Mike notes). Also bitten us multiple times, which is why our code reviews require a terminating end event (properly placed of course) in all processes. In 10 years working with Appian I can't recall having many issues with terminate events, but also can't count how much troubleshooting I've done with non-terminating.

RE: What is difference between end event and a terminate the event?

Mike Schmitt — Wed, 23 Sep 2020 14:16:37 GMT

That's fine until you work O&M, and suddenly realize that if you restart or bypass a node that failed due to an error, the end event no longer actually forces the instance to close and resume the parent process. I can't count the number of times I've needed to edit an instance just to turn its plain End node into a Terminate to handle various permutations of this situaton, when they could've just used a Terminate node instead. I've never regretted using terminates liberally - the only possible exception is when a newbie developer used a terminate where they should really have used an end node, but even that is usually the other way around.

RE: What is difference between end event and a terminate the event?

Stewart Burchell — Wed, 23 Sep 2020 08:49:13 GMT

Mike Schmitt Interesting PoV. I take the "horses for courses" view - know when to use a terminate event, know when to use an end event and use as applicable. I don't see the need for making the end event terminates by default because (for me) that causes special behaviour that is only needed in certain circumstances. Which you use has no bearing on when a process instance gets flushed from memory. The criteria for that is the Data Management policy you've instituted only comes into force when all active threads have completed. So: I use End by default, and ONLY use Terminate when I need to kill the process and kill all currently active threads.

Discuss.

RE: What is difference between end event and a terminate the event?

Chris — Tue, 22 Sep 2020 17:43:14 GMT

100% agree as well, defaulting to Terminate functionality would be a nice time saver. Checking our dev environment, 1566 process models has costed at least 7830 clicks to just setup terminate functionality on the primary end nodes, which is probably used in over 90% of our overall End Events as well. Got my vote.

RE: What is difference between end event and a terminate the event?

davel001150 — Tue, 22 Sep 2020 16:26:23 GMT

Agreed.

If Appian is still interested in time savings, just look at the total minutes recovered across an application's development when you've made Terminate the default behavior of the node, and End the secondary behavior that you have to explicitly define.

RE: What is difference between end event and a terminate the event?

Mike Schmitt — Tue, 22 Sep 2020 14:03:49 GMT

Strong agree - I make all end nodes Terminate nodes until/unless otherwise required. In fact I'm actively annoyed that there's no way to add terminate nodes by default or at least have them show up as an extra selection - since it costs 5 or 6 clicks to switch an End around and activate the Terminate functionality.

RE: What is difference between end event and a terminate the event?

ChristineLHutchison — Tue, 22 Sep 2020 12:43:18 GMT

I always recommend that a process have a terminate event. A terminate event makes sure that receive email message nodes are no longer listening, timers are no longer active, quick tasks (for process backed records) are no longer available, ... This will make sure that this instance of the process model is now beginning its data management journey to archive, that in turn, helps keep your environment leaner.

RE: What is difference between end event and a terminate the event?

gangadharr0001 — Sun, 20 Sep 2020 09:45:28 GMT

Thanks for quick reply

RE: What is difference between end event and a terminate the event?

Stefan Helzle — Sun, 20 Sep 2020 09:09:18 GMT

https://docs.appian.com/suite/help/20.3/End_Event.html#results

A process can have multiple End Events. If so, the different branches of a process remain active until each active path reaches one of the multiple End Event nodes. In such cases, a Terminate Process event can be used to stop all branches of a process, even if one or more branches have not yet reached an End Event node.