Simultaneous Approvals cause one of the node to fail and throw exception error "Unable to write output document"

Jess over 7 years ago

Hi,

We have a process in which 6 approvers can simultaneously approve that same request. They have their own Save as draft, Return and Approve. We design the process just like as attached because if one of them Returned the request due to incomplete details/etc, or Disapproved the request, all the tasks of the other 5 approvers will be halted. With that, it's working as expected. But if they all Approve the request at the same time, (split seconds), either 1 or 2 of them will get exception error on a particular node (Generation of Memo) - "Unable to write output document". If we put delays before that node, it won't be effective cause one of them will encounter 6 minutes delay (if we put delays 1 minute per approver). Please advise on how to solve this. TIA.

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0 Sathya Srinivasan
Appian Employee
over 7 years ago

How are the other tasks halted? Are you using Exception or is the process getting terminated which in turn takes the task away from those other users?
In reality (a) you should be using Exceptions to manage this and (b) You need to educate the users that the task will not be available for them to complete (assuming they have it open) because its gone into exception. If you insist on this way, then the other thing you can do is to NOT terminate the task but have an XOR gateway immediately after the task that checks if any other task had been completed. Use a process variable to handle this. If that be the case, then show a follow-up screen (activity chained) to the user indicating this task has already been completed. You can then put a timer + rule based exception to automatically terminate the sub process when the parent process is done.
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0 Sathya Srinivasan
Appian Employee
over 7 years ago

How are the other tasks halted? Are you using Exception or is the process getting terminated which in turn takes the task away from those other users?
In reality (a) you should be using Exceptions to manage this and (b) You need to educate the users that the task will not be available for them to complete (assuming they have it open) because its gone into exception. If you insist on this way, then the other thing you can do is to NOT terminate the task but have an XOR gateway immediately after the task that checks if any other task had been completed. Use a process variable to handle this. If that be the case, then show a follow-up screen (activity chained) to the user indicating this task has already been completed. You can then put a timer + rule based exception to automatically terminate the sub process when the parent process is done.
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