"Task could not be submitted" Timeout exception

Question

We have an bug where:

WHEN a user is in a user input task and allows the timer (1 hr) to terminate the task
THEN they are stuck in this screen and not able to close out of the task with the EXCEPTION of closing out of the tab.

My question is besides extending the timer is there any way to circumvent this error or allow users to exit out of the dialogue box without closing the tab?

mikes0011 · Accepted Answer

This is a longstanding "feature" (as in, "it's not a bug, it's a feature"... for some reason) since ... well i've been here over 10 years now.

There are several reasonable and usable workarounds. All of them involve preventing the user from being able to click on a task's submit button past the expiration timer. My favorite one, of course, is to make the expiration timeout long enough that no user will ever be on the task that long - after all, do you really want to have a user in a situation where they fill out 95% of a form, then wander away to lunch, then come back and everything is lost because the timer fired?

The other main method I usually do, geared more towards forms where a user doesn't actually need to "submit" it in any case, such as a "final confirmation" form, is to present them with a task with NO submit capability - this could include a SafeLink that navigates back to their Site, or just instructions that tell them (for instance) to click on the "Home Tab", etc. These could have a particularly short timeout time value, since the user won't be trying to submit them at all.

csteward · Answer

This is not a bug per say, it is "intended" functionality for when a user has a task open that is completed via exception.

However, we can program around this fairly cleanly. Typically I would have a script task just prior to the user input task which saves the end time (now() + 1 hour) into a process variable. Pass this process variable to your interface. You then have a refresh variable at the minimum 30 seconds which compares the current time now() to the process variable. If the current time is less than the end time, show all interface components as normal. If the current time is greater than the end time rule input, hide all other components and show a section with only a rich text component (something like "Time has expired, click Exit below to close this window" then a Exit button which submits the form, then the task can end gracefully and you can direct the flow to completion or wherever else you would like based on the Exit button being utilized.

The last part to cleanup here is for when the user does not use your Exit button, but X's out of the browser window. Since you still want to ensure these processes are completed, I would put a longer exception timer on the task - such as, if the time limit is 1 hour, set the exception somewhere 4-24 hours, which will depend a bit on how the process is utilized and what it does.

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