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| MQRR |
 Posted: Thu Oct 30, 2003 11:26 am Post subject: buildtime :changing the staff assignment |
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Centurion
Joined: 10 Aug 2003
Posts: 110
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Hi all,
how can we model a situation where we can repeat an activity and for each repetition we could change the staff.
Any ideas. I tried different things but nothing is working out.
MQRR |
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| Ratan |
| Posted: Thu Oct 30, 2003 11:33 am Post subject: |
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Grand Master
Joined: 18 Jul 2002
Posts: 1245
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You can do it by placing your own logic to change users and have the staff resolution defined as "From Container". For ever iteration have an activity that updates the Staff member in the defined Container member.
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-Ratan |
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| MQRR |
| Posted: Thu Oct 30, 2003 11:52 am Post subject: in detail: |
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Centurion
Joined: 10 Aug 2003
Posts: 110
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Thanks ratan. Could you please tell me where I write this logic.
And Let me give the whole picture of what I am trying to accomplish.
Suppose I have a flow A ---> B
activity B should send a work item to "n"(I know this only in runtime) number of persons. One problem is as you can see i can not assign these persons in the design time since I do not know the number.
The other problem is all these persons should be able get the workitem as a different workitem, so that B+n1 (i.e workitem) can work on it and B+n2 can work on it so on, independent of the other.
The default behaviour is once someone checks it out or completes it the others can not do the same on the workitem.
So what I was trying was run the activity B in loop so that each time assign different person to the activity. And now the worktiem generated will be specific to the person.
Do you have any suggestions |
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| Ratan |
| Posted: Thu Oct 30, 2003 12:48 pm Post subject: |
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Grand Master
Joined: 18 Jul 2002
Posts: 1245
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Only one person can work on a workitem. You cant have all the people work on the workitem derived from the same Activity Instance.
You should have an automatic acitivity before the Activity in question and determine staff for the manual activity in the automatic activity.
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-Ratan |
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| MQRR |
| Posted: Thu Oct 30, 2003 1:44 pm Post subject: |
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Centurion
Joined: 10 Aug 2003
Posts: 110
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ratan,
So can I do this way.
A--> | decide ---> C |
the | | means it is in block.
Activity" decide " is an automatic activity which makes use of a program which has logic that gets the n1 and sets the output container of "decide"
to n1. And then map this outputcontanier value to the input container value of the C. And now the final step would be the staffing would be assigned for the activity C from the input container.
The above steps go on in a loop until all members are done.
Did I get it right. or Am I dumb 
MQRR |
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| Ratan |
| Posted: Thu Oct 30, 2003 2:54 pm Post subject: |
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Grand Master
Joined: 18 Jul 2002
Posts: 1245
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Right.
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-Ratan |
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| MQRR |
| Posted: Thu Oct 30, 2003 3:27 pm Post subject: thanks |
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| MQRR |
| Posted: Sun Nov 02, 2003 11:57 am Post subject: |
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Centurion
Joined: 10 Aug 2003
Posts: 110
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I guess it is still not over yet. previously I just mentioned half of the problem. One is assigning staff dynamically, other half is assigning them independently. I forgot thebasics while trying to solve this problem. When I design this way, I will be able to assign the activity to different staff for each iteration (in runtime). But the problem again here is still the assigning of the staff and generating the workitems is still dependent. i.e
If i have staff n1,n2,n3 then in first iteration it will generate work item for n1, and waits for n1 to complete the workitem, and then in second iteration n2 gets the workitem and so on.
is there a way this loop can go on without waiting for n1,n2 .. to complete there workitems. or is there any other backdoor to achieve this.
Hope my questions are valid ones
MQRR |
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| Ratan |
| Posted: Mon Nov 03, 2003 10:43 am Post subject: |
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Grand Master
Joined: 18 Jul 2002
Posts: 1245
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define you problem once again.
Looks like all you need is assigning the workitem to a group of people.
With looping workitem gets assigned to N1. After he completes it exit condition of block is checked and if not met workitem is again generated for the activity (if you assign a different user this time, it will go to the new user). If exit condition is met, block completes and next activity in higher level diagram will be executed.
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-Ratan |
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| jmac |
| Posted: Mon Nov 03, 2003 11:08 am Post subject: |
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Jedi Knight
Joined: 27 Jun 2001
Posts: 3081
Location: EmeriCon, LLC
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MQRR:
What you want is a construct that was in the old FlowMark product that was called a "Bundle". Unfortunately this product never quite made it into MQWorkflow.
I have seen several attempts to do similar processing to what you are suggesting, but they are either not nice to model, or not real good performers.
The best performing way, is to model your process so that you simply create one activity for each user.
If you need to do this dynamically it's not a real good performer because it would require nested subprocesses.
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John McDonald
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| Prahasith |
| Posted: Mon Nov 03, 2003 11:16 am Post subject: |
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Disciple
Joined: 16 May 2003
Posts: 184
Location: Kansas City
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MQRR,
you might want to take a look at this.
IBM has given an example on the bundling concept
Page No 51
WD01 Business Process Modeling with WebSphere MQ Workflow
Last edited by Prahasith on Mon Nov 03, 2003 1:53 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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| MQRR |
| Posted: Mon Nov 03, 2003 12:21 pm Post subject: Design |
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Centurion
Joined: 10 Aug 2003
Posts: 110
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Ratan,Jmac,Prahasith,
Thanks u all for the reply. The first thing I looked into when I got this problem, was BPM page 51 as prahasith suggested. I am sorry guys I should have mentioned it, it would have made easier for to understand my problem. Thanks prahasith.
Then again after I looked into it for some reason I came to conclusion that it would not work. But I guess I may be wrong. Jmac I guess when you say Bundling you refer to the same point which prahasith pointed out.
I agree with you when you say that it is not good way to do design, but the problem is I do not have any control over that, So I just want give the solution for now.
Ratan,
The way you said would work fine. But problem is there is dependency there. Order is only goes in sequence and the other thing is for n2 or n3 so on to get the work item n1 should complete the work item. But in my case I want to generate different work items. I know as you said one activity instance can be worked upon by only one person. So the only possible solution could be using a sub process and creating and instance of that process for each person in a loop.(this process would have single activity that would be assigned to different person each time).
I will get back to you guys in couple of hours once I check this bundling concept again.
Thanks again.
MQRR |
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| MQRR |
| Posted: Mon Nov 03, 2003 4:13 pm Post subject: |
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Centurion
Joined: 10 Aug 2003
Posts: 110
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Hi,
I am back as promised  . I was trying to model the process on page 51,
WD01 Business Process Modeling. I have created a data member of array size 10 and data type is Data structure( for example Person). Person has data members Lastname and FirstName.
Now As shown in the diagram I modeled Bundling_Sub process with activity "dummy" and other activities Activity1 and so on.
And then for ParallelActivity1,Parallelactivity2, Parallelactivity3, Parallelactivity4 I assigned the dynamic staffing from the input container which It gets from activity "dummy".
So now the flow should be
At dummy you enter 10 person names, and first four persons will be assigned to the four activities and then the fifth activity at the bottom is nothing but we are calling the process again. So this assigning should go on from 5 ..... until 10. And then the loop is done.
But When I model this, first four workitems are generated and again the process is called as expected but an workitem is generated for "dummy"
and waits there. I thought the use of the recursion is going from 1 to 10 without stopping.
How do I change the Index. It is given in the PDF that mapping should take care of it. But it doesnt look like so.
Did I understand this concept wrong.
I guess my explanation may be little vauge. Incase you have any questions I will be hear to answer them so that it makes more sense.
Thank you for your time guys
MQRR |
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| Ratan |
| Posted: Mon Nov 03, 2003 4:41 pm Post subject: |
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Grand Master
Joined: 18 Jul 2002
Posts: 1245
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Dummy should be an automatic avtivity.You do not enter the data at Activity Dummy ( I suspect that is what you are doing). Data should be provided as input from the Parent_Process.
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-Ratan |
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| MQRR |
| Posted: Mon Nov 03, 2003 7:31 pm Post subject: |
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Centurion
Joined: 10 Aug 2003
Posts: 110
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Thanks ratan. I get it now. I will make it automatic activity. For now I was testing by entering the data manually. I have problem while mapping the data. The document says map the data from Dummy activity to BundleRecursive such that the fifth datamember points to first datamember in BundlingRecursive, so that you send only datamemebrs from five to eight in second iteration. And third iteration you reduce another 4, so you send 9 and 10. So on.
But the BundlingRecursive is passing in this way in second iteration.
1st element in the array- 5
2nd.... -6
3...............................- 7
4..............................-8
5th...........................-5
6.............................-6
7..............................7
8.............................8
9.............................9
10...........................10
So it looks like it still has memory of old values. It just replacing the upper four elements in the array. How do I get rid of this problem.
MQRR |
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