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matthiasb6903
March 7, 2024
Question

Activity Chaining not sending email for user tasks

  • March 7, 2024
  • 4 replies
  • 0 views

Hi guys,

Encountered an interesting behaviour today in a workflow that encompasses a multitude of different process models. Each PM is a step in the process, and some steps are performed by different teams. E.g. Team A would perform a relevance check, then Team B would check if all is in order and either approve or send it back.

What I noticed is that sometimes Team A will not receive an automated email by Appian with their task, although they are the assignee in Appian and can navigate to it from there. And it seems that it has to do with how Activity Chaining and the checkbox for "Override assignment for the next attended activity even if the current user is not an assignee" in the flow properties is set up?

I tried to check the documentation for information / best practices in this regard, but didn't find anything pertaining to this problem. Would someone happen to know what the rules are and what pitfalls I should avoid when modelling such a workflow?

Best,

Matthias

4 replies

venkatrea696188
venkatrea696188
March 7, 2024

AFAIK Activity Chaining Overrides everything , If it's enabled appian doesn't even bother about the Assignee in the  "Assignment Tab ". 

 Common Process Model Workflows and Recipes  go through this link it holds few Recipes for designing a Process model

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matthiasb6903Author
March 7, 2024

I did a little bit of testing in that regard and set up a process to try some scenarios.

Case 2 tasks where 1 is Team A and 2 is Team B and activity chaining without override is active, an email is sent. If override is checked no email is sent. 

Case 2 tasks where 1 is Team A and 2 is also Team A + chaining without override is active, an email for task 1 wil be sent but not for task 2.

Case 2 tasks and entire chain has chaining + override, no emails are sent at all (only on reassign).

I also noticed that if the activity chain breaks in between and chain+override is active again before a task, an email WILL be sent.

It's a little odd to me that there is no optin to force sending a notification because in our case, normally it is okay to not send an email as a person will go through several steps of forms as part of the activity. However, after those steps are completed another team might issue a correction and send it back to a previous step. If the same flow is used, no mail will be sent.

A feasible solution then appears to set a pv isCorrection and use an email template with a task link separately. I just wonder why this isn't a base feature?

    davidj137213
    davidj137213
    March 7, 2024

    According to documentation

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      matthiasb6903Author
      March 7, 2024

      I checked the process model and the flow has override active for each node except before the user input task (activity chaining enabled but override unchecked). This is true for all sub-processes step 1-7 (activity chaining+override on all nodes, except for flow leading to user task which has override unchecked). Step 8 is the supervisor task where activiity chain ends before the user task. Here, an email is sent of course.

      What's the feasible solution here? Normally we want users to go from form to form seamlessly. Just check via XOR whether it was issued back and use different flow properties depending on that?

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