Automic Workload Automation

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PRB00135332 — Endless activation after starting inactive task with "GO Immediate"

  • 1.  PRB00135332 — Endless activation after starting inactive task with "GO Immediate"

    Posted Nov 22, 2017 12:09 PM
    I would like to raise awareness about a very serious bug that affects AE v11.2.5 & v12.0.2.

    PRB00135332:

    An error has been fixed where starting an inactive task within a workflow with "GO Immediate" lead to an endless activation of this task. Only cancelling the workflow cancelled the activation of tasks.
    When this bug hit us, it caused almost ten million tasks to be added to the activity table within a matter of minutes. Needless to say, this had a negative impact on the system, and it took hours to remove the erroneous rows from the DB and get the system back up and running. We were very lucky that this did not happen in the production environment.

    If you are running an unpatched system, do not use the GO Immediate function with inactive workflow tasks.

    See known error article 10015 for more details.


  • 2.  PRB00135332 — Endless activation after starting inactive task with "GO Immediate"

    Posted Nov 23, 2017 03:33 AM
    Obviously it would be preferable to find out about known problems before they impact us. Automic_Community_5543: Is there a way to sign up to be notified automatically when new known error articles are published?


  • 3.  PRB00135332 — Endless activation after starting inactive task with "GO Immediate"

    Posted Nov 23, 2017 03:58 AM
    Michael A. Lowry said:
    Obviously it would be preferable to find out about known problems before they impact us.Automic_Community_5543: Is there a way to sign up to be notified automatically when new known error articles are published?
    Mario_Tadros_1606 Octavie_Chakoute_1958 : do you know if what Michael asks for is possible ?

    Best regards,
    Antoine


  • 4.  PRB00135332 — Endless activation after starting inactive task with "GO Immediate"

    Posted Nov 23, 2017 04:59 AM
    Hi

    Michael A. Lowry



    I may be wrong, but I do not think there is such a thing as a subscription list for known error articles.

    Closest thing I cound find so far is this : [DEAD LINK https://community.automic.com/discussion/7043/how-to-get-an-email-notification-for-new-product-version-released]https://community.automic.com/discussion/7043/how-to-get-an-email-notification-for-new-product-version-released

    From there you can use the 'Release Notes' to get the list of fixes.

    Hope this helps anyway.

    Best regards,
    Antoine


  • 5.  PRB00135332 — Endless activation after starting inactive task with "GO Immediate"

    Posted Nov 23, 2017 05:45 AM
    We've already subscribed to receive notifications of new releases. What we would like is to be notified of problems as soon as Automic knows about them, even if a fix is not yet available.


  • 6.  PRB00135332 — Endless activation after starting inactive task with "GO Immediate"

    Posted Nov 23, 2017 07:49 AM

    I would also like to be notified about known bugs as soon as Automic is aware of them.

    @Michael Lowry, we also ran into the issue with GO Immediate and I belive it was solved in 11.2.6 which we have already deployed. :-)



  • 7.  PRB00135332 — Endless activation after starting inactive task with "GO Immediate"

    Posted Nov 23, 2017 02:55 PM
    Almost sounds like we need a 'Known Bug' section in the community?


  • 8.  PRB00135332 — Endless activation after starting inactive task with "GO Immediate"

    Posted Dec 04, 2017 11:45 AM
    Michael A. Lowry said:
    Obviously it would be preferable to find out about known problems before they impact us.Automic_Community_5543: Is there a way to sign up to be notified automatically when new known error articles are published?

    Such a facility was, no surprises here, also a repeat (this year, and IIRC last year, too) request at FOKUS, from the floor of the roughly 50 members of the German-speaking Automic customer association. It was said that this will be investigated.

     

    Since I didn't find anything there yet, I posted this to ideas.automic.com. Feel free to vote:

     

    #FOKUS Notification facility for newly found bugs, problems, major showstoppers 



  • 9.  PRB00135332 — Endless activation after starting inactive task with "GO Immediate"

    Posted Dec 04, 2017 12:05 PM
    Alexander Trenker wrote:
    Almost sounds like we need a 'Known Bug' section in the community?
    That would be sufficient for the bugs that have an associated known bug article. But what about those that don’t? It might not make sense to create an article for each bug.

    I see a few ways Automic could handle such notifications:
    1. Publicly, via the discussion forum
    2. Semi-publicly via an access-controlled web page
    3. Privately just to likely affected customers

    Each approach has advantages and disadvantages. And of course they’re not mutually exclusive. Automic could employ a combination of these approaches, or could use one approach with some bugs and another approach with others.


  • 10.  PRB00135332 — Endless activation after starting inactive task with "GO Immediate"

    Posted Dec 11, 2017 05:30 AM
    Has there been any progress on this?

    This is actually listed as item #23 in the list of Automic Support issues, originally posted more than a year ago:
    When a serious bug is found, Automic Support should automatically notify all potentially affected customers.
    It would be unfortunate if Automic did not take this opportunity to properly address the issue.


  • 11.  PRB00135332 — Endless activation after starting inactive task with "GO Immediate"

    Posted Jan 02, 2018 11:49 AM
    Michael Lowry said:
    Has there been any progress on this?

    This is actually listed as item #23 in the list of Automic Support issues, originally posted more than a year ago:
    When a serious bug is found, Automic Support should automatically notify all potentially affected customers.
    I'm going to add something more to this discussion:

    To my surprise, I just discovered that apparently things get added to the "Known Problems" section on the website not when a serious problem is discovered, but only after a fix is available. So in other words, one may plan an upgrade to "current", and "current" may have showstopper problems possibly already known to Automic, but these potential problems will not yet appear on the website !?


  • 12.  PRB00135332 — Endless activation after starting inactive task with "GO Immediate"

    Posted Jan 03, 2018 05:13 AM
    Automic’s reasoning here appears to be something like this:
    • Present the product in as positive a light as possible.
    • Acknowledge problems with the software only when absolutely necessary.
    • Provide details on software problems to as limited a scope of customers as possible.

    This means that when the company discovers a bug in the product, they simply hope that customers do not encounter the bug — at least not before a fix is ready.

    This approach has both desirable and undesirable consequences.
    • To many customers, the product seems less buggy than it actually is, because they simply do not know about — and never encounter — most bugs. (Crucially, this also applies toprospectivecustomers, who are even less likely to discover bugs on their own and who are important to thegrowthof Automic’s business.)
    • Some customers needlessly run into bugs that could have been avoided if Automic had been more forthcoming with information.

    As long as Automic determines that the advantages of this approach outweigh the disadvantages, the company is unlikely to change its policy. Obviously, we hope that we can persuade the company that the benefits of greater transparency are worth the costs.

    Ping: Michiel_Verhoeven_4432, Mario_Tadros_1606


  • 13.  PRB00135332 — Endless activation after starting inactive task with "GO Immediate"

    Posted Jan 03, 2018 05:38 AM
    Michael_Lowry Kudos, well said! I was thinking the same thing: Marketing trumps customer care, new sales trump existing customers.

    In other news, the "official" idea for the proactive, subscription-based bug notification tool has still not gone into the voting phase. I have made a thread to have it pushed, and another one which is also not cleared for voting yet. I will let you know here when it enters the voting stage.

    Cheers,
    Carsten


  • 14.  PRB00135332 — Endless activation after starting inactive task with "GO Immediate"

    Posted Jan 04, 2018 10:06 AM
    Michael_Lowry, all,

    Afraid I have bad news on the topic of getting proactive, product-specific push information about, at the least, critical bugs:

    The associated idea will not enter the voting stage. The response I received:

    Thank you for the idea.

    I understand this used to be available in a previous UC4 case management system where you could register an interest in a specific topic and receive notifications.

    We don’t have this register capability in the new system.

    We also don’t have the customer environment information required to filter it automatically.

    We included a new Data Collection Service with V12.1 which is an opt-in service and will allow Automic to receive customer Automic environment information.

    If customers opt-in to his service they can expect the data to be used in the way you describe in the near future.

     

    Meanwhile we do not want to spam customers with information about agents, platforms and integrations in which they have no interest.

     

    As I mentioned in the other email, we will move to a new CA system in April and we may consider this request for the new system.

    I assume the data collection service is in reference to Analytics.

    As for the "do not want to spam", this is curious, considering the amount of information I already get  from the Automic marketing department (eventhough I requested to unsubscribe) about topics in which I have no interrest.

    Best regards,


  • 15.  PRB00135332 — Endless activation after starting inactive task with "GO Immediate"

    Posted Jan 04, 2018 11:24 AM
    Carsten_Schmitz_7883: Whether the company is comfortable spamming you depends on the content and intent of the message. ;)


  • 16.  PRB00135332 — Endless activation after starting inactive task with "GO Immediate"

    Posted Jan 04, 2018 01:47 PM
    Carsten_Schmitz_7883   how dare you ?!?!

    My first task every morning is checking the mailbox on my mobile phone if I got a mail from Sabrina Bäcker.
    Almost every 6 days I get a new email with groundbreaking infos about DevOps and Continuous Delivery I love to read during my first coffee.

    And - to be honest- I would love to get an email on a daily basis, there is that much Sabrina can tell us
    about both topics!

    If there was a Whatsapp group I would love to be part of!

    Topic suggestions for the next mails:
    • DevOps
    • Continuous Delivery
    • Agility
    • Digital Transformation

    have a great weekend,
    Wolfgang




  • 17.  PRB00135332 — Endless activation after starting inactive task with "GO Immediate"

    Posted Jan 05, 2018 03:47 AM
    Dear Wolfgang,


    My first task every morning is checking the mailbox on my mobile phone if I got a mail from

    You're doing it wrong. Of course one reads them last thing in the evening. I have the most blissful, rapid onset sleep ever since.

    ;)


  • 18.  PRB00135332 — Endless activation after starting inactive task with "GO Immediate"

    Posted Jan 05, 2018 04:09 AM
    FrankMuffke: We are very enthusiastic about these topics. This is why we would be delighted if Automic would provide official support for running Automic applications in Docker containers. :)


  • 19.  PRB00135332 — Endless activation after starting inactive task with "GO Immediate"

    Posted Jan 05, 2018 04:28 AM
    Carsten Schmitz said:
    I have the most blissful, rapid onset sleep ever since.
    Me too - as soon as I arrive in my office...

    :P