My company has a huge process model, includes hundreds of nodes and a lot sub process, there are a lot form nodes in this pm, they all having activity chaining and assigned to same user, we are developing on this pm and also have changes on ui and forms.
When user finish and submit this form, will automatically redirect to next form node and do next form.
Form data is complex list of cdt saves in process variables, and will write to db
The problem is, our form can add multiple blocks of a same form, this can make list of data very big, when we added too many form blocks, likely 30 + blocks, then submit, then it shows a little action complete banner, and redirects to home page, but you can countiune this process and find next task in current user’s tasks, user can countiune task with no error. And in process instance monitoring, no error. I guess it’s data size problem, but I didn’t find a way to resolve this problem, some times there will be a huge form.
Discussion posts and replies are publicly visible
As per my understanding there are no errors but activity chaining is failing after a certain user input task node (i guess this is what you mean by 'blocks') and the next form is not shown after the previous one.
If this is the case, then I strongly recommend optimising the process and form designs - like using multiple related actions instead of one big action for the user is better in cases like these. Huge processes with synchronous/activity chained node activities limit performance in many ways.
Well, I highly recommend to refactor this process.
Then, there are some limitations to chaining. Any chance that you have a MNI node somewhere in that chain?
Ah the block i worte on the question are just list of form data, forms are dymatic form, so user can make form unlimited large, but your understanding is right, activity chaining is not working to go to next form. Well, this processs is too big to change, I guess it will just laying there and wait for appian version update to fix this.
It contains more than 500 nodes and near 100 sub process node, during years of maintance, I guess it's not refactorable
Yeah, a pile of questionable design decisions. We all love this.
You will have to refactor/rebuild it anyways. Either now, or in the future. Waiting just makes it more costly.
its not an Appian problem as such to update something and fix it! Its more of a design issue which should be improved as soon as feasible.
Hi,
When too much data is passed between activity-chained forms, Appian silently breaks the chaining and redirects to the homepage. This is not a bug but a design limitation due to memory and performance constraints. As advised by experts, the long-term fix is to split the process into smaller, optimized actions or subprocesses.
Got it, thank you, after read your reply, I got another question, you gave me an idea of split process to smaller, now in this process, two forms are chained but not connected directly, there are a lot sub process node and other nodes between two form nodes, evey line is activity chained, so its design is already splited to sub processes, but it still break, do you mean the split is to make user do more interactions on interface and call more process to save data part by part instead of sending everyting toba process at once
Just splitting the process in half, while keeping the same design will not make it.
First please try what Stefan suggested....
Splitting into subprocesses alone won't fix it if the overall data load is still huge.
Instead, redesign forms to submit data in smaller parts (e.g., wizard-style steps).
Reduce activity chaining depth — avoid chaining through many heavy nodes/subprocesses.
Use save-and-resume patterns or write-to-DB in stages to manage memory better.