Clarity

I wanted to share something that we've reported as a potential defect recently.

Whilst we don't have statistics, we suspect it could occur in older versions of Clarity but have had it reported prominently in version 14.2, and concerns itself with multiple process instances getting launched against the same object instance record after a single XOG/UI update - specifically when that process contains system actions which also set attributes on the object instance.

If you have or are considering process definitions with this design, my recent posting may be worth checking:

System Action In The Finish Step - Potential For Endless Process Chains

We've only had one actual case of this diagnosed with this result so far, but I suspect that has more to do with us not previously determining this as a root cause for it, and the problem has likely occurred a number of times before too.  Even one case is not good though, as that one ended up with >3 million process instances being spawned in a short time frame, so prevention is certainly better than the cure.

Incidentally, there should be a KB / tecdoc coming for this in due course too - I'm just getting a headstart against it until we have more information by posting this now.

Thanks for sharing this Nick!

Nick Darlington wrote:

 

I wanted to share something that we've reported as a potential defect recently.

 

Whilst we don't have statistics, we suspect it could occur in older versions of Clarity but have had it reported prominently in version 14.2, and concerns itself with multiple process instances getting launched against the same object instance record after a single XOG/UI update - specifically when that process contains system actions which also set attributes on the object instance.

 

If you have or are considering process definitions with this design, my recent posting may be worth checking:

 

System Action In The Finish Step - Potential For Endless Process Chains

 

We've only had one actual case of this diagnosed with this result so far, but I suspect that has more to do with us not previously determining this as a root cause for it, and the problem has likely occurred a number of times before too.  Even one case is not good though, as that one ended up with >3 million process instances being spawned in a short time frame, so prevention is certainly better than the cure.

Hi,

We are facing a similar issue where the process creates multiple copies (as much as 20,000) of the same process instance and it got stuck at the step where we have a system action a couple of times (creating multiple copies).

Is there a resolution for this issue?

Thanks,

Ashmi

Hi Ashmi,

Nick Darlington also wrote a blog entry with more details about this issue:

System Action In The Finish Step - Potential For Endless Process Chains

Just add a step to your process right before the finish step and move your system action to that step.  This should prevent this problem from occurring most if not all of the time.

NOTE:  It is considered a best practice to not have any actions in either the start or finish steps of a process.

This should alleviate the problem until a more permanent fix can be provided by development.

Sincerely yours,

Jeanne Gaskill

Senior Support Engineer

CA Clarity PPM

Thanks for sharing this useful info, Nick

Regards

NJ