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| praveenchhangani |
 Posted: Mon May 12, 2003 7:41 am Post subject: Force-Finishing work items... |
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Disciple
Joined: 20 Sep 2002
Posts: 192
Location: Chicago, IL
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Folks,
Is there a way to tell if a work item or certain work items for a particular date were force finished in workflow? In otherwords like a history of some sort indicating that Joe Smith force finished work item 99 on May 8th of 2003.
Thanks,Praveen
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Praveen K. Chhangani,
IBM Certified Solutions Designer -
MQ Workflow 3.4. |
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| jmac |
| Posted: Mon May 12, 2003 8:00 am Post subject: |
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Jedi Knight
Joined: 27 Jun 2001
Posts: 3081
Location: EmeriCon, LLC
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Praveen:
Force Finish of a workitem is Audited, so it will be in the audit trail.
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John McDonald
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| praveenchhangani |
| Posted: Mon May 12, 2003 9:19 am Post subject: |
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Disciple
Joined: 20 Sep 2002
Posts: 192
Location: Chicago, IL
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Ahh, that's a good idea John.
Thanks,Praveen...
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Praveen K. Chhangani,
IBM Certified Solutions Designer -
MQ Workflow 3.4. |
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| praveenchhangani |
| Posted: Mon May 12, 2003 10:23 am Post subject: |
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Disciple
Joined: 20 Sep 2002
Posts: 192
Location: Chicago, IL
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Well, okat not so faassssssst I guess! 
Turns out, the audit trail is not turned on(the default) for the system that I am interested in gaining this information from.
Is that the only way to retrieve such information? If so, is it pretty much impossible at this point (considering that the default audit trail is turned on), to achive this....
Thanks.
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Praveen K. Chhangani,
IBM Certified Solutions Designer -
MQ Workflow 3.4. |
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| jmac |
| Posted: Mon May 12, 2003 10:32 am Post subject: |
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Jedi Knight
Joined: 27 Jun 2001
Posts: 3081
Location: EmeriCon, LLC
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Praveen:
It is my opinion that you should always turn the audit trail on at the Domain level. I can think of no reason why you wouldn't want that information (i.e the audit codes).
Without the Audit information you may be out of luck... This is one possibility you might look at. This will only work if the instance in question is still running. Access the Activity Instances for the process instance. Find the one whose name (or fullName if nested) matches the activity you are interested in, then access the staff() method for that activiity, I am thinking that this might be the user who did the force finish.
GOOD LUCK
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John McDonald
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| Ratan |
| Posted: Mon May 12, 2003 10:48 am Post subject: |
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Grand Master
Joined: 18 Jul 2002
Posts: 1245
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May be you can get the info by setting "retain finished workitems forever"
and then for the user get his workitems, check the state of workitem (check for forcefinished).
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-Ratan |
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| jmac |
| Posted: Mon May 12, 2003 10:56 am Post subject: |
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Jedi Knight
Joined: 27 Jun 2001
Posts: 3081
Location: EmeriCon, LLC
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| Ratan wrote: |
May be you can get the info by setting "retain finished workitems forever"
and then for the user get his workitems, check the state of workitem (check for forcefinished). |
Yes this would definitely be the case, but my interpretation of what Praveen is saying is that he does not have control over the System settings, and since he cant change the Audit, he would not be able to change the keep finished items either.
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John McDonald
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| praveenchhangani |
| Posted: Mon May 12, 2003 9:56 pm Post subject: |
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Disciple
Joined: 20 Sep 2002
Posts: 192
Location: Chicago, IL
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Actually John, I do have control over the settings of audit trail and I can easily turn it on and/or off. This was something I was keeping as my last resort, simply because my understanding of the way the audit trail works is that, if you turn it on at the domain level you have turned on audit at all other systems that inherit from the domain(I could be wrong on this, but am pretty sure of this). You then run into situations whereby all systems are picking up from that and maintaining audits even if they are not needed or required to do so. I could be wrong here, but typically I thought it was best to set the audit trail on ONLY at the activity level allowing you to store information you need only for the program activity it is that you are wanting more information from.
One of the reasons we stray away from auditing eg(FULL AUDIT TO DB, FULL AUDIT TO MQ, CONDENSED AUDIT etc), is because depending on how large one's model is, it creates a lot of stress on the server and that's why we only turn on audit on exactly what we need it to be turned on for. Infact, I believe workflow default way of doing things is that it leaves the audit trail trail turned off unless you physically go in the FDL iteself and make that addition(because you cannot do it from BT).
As far as what Ratan is saying about setting the "retain finished workitems forever" attribute, this might have been really helpful had the instance nto completed. Unfortunately or fortunately the instance has been completed and all work is done, but as a workflow administrator, it gets you thinking about what other ways there may be to track down the doings of a particular user if the audit trail itself is set to default (off).
fun, fun, fun eh?!
Thanks,Praveen
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Praveen K. Chhangani,
IBM Certified Solutions Designer -
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| jmac |
| Posted: Tue May 13, 2003 5:40 am Post subject: |
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Jedi Knight
Joined: 27 Jun 2001
Posts: 3081
Location: EmeriCon, LLC
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Praveen:
Have you considered using an Audit filter to weed out some of the less important events.
Also, you can set at the Process level if you do not want to audit all processes. I am well aware of the overhead of auditing, but if you don't audit once an instance completes you have no records of that instance in MQWF
GOOD LUCK
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John McDonald
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| praveenchhangani |
| Posted: Tue May 13, 2003 8:56 am Post subject: |
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Disciple
Joined: 20 Sep 2002
Posts: 192
Location: Chicago, IL
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I completely agree with you on that John. Auditing is necessary, how much you audit however can be the tricky part. As far as the instance is concerned, I can re-run it, because it's a regularly used model.
Thanks for your help
Praveen
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Praveen K. Chhangani,
IBM Certified Solutions Designer -
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| jmac |
| Posted: Tue May 13, 2003 9:04 am Post subject: |
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Jedi Knight
Joined: 27 Jun 2001
Posts: 3081
Location: EmeriCon, LLC
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Praveen:
But rerunning it will not tell you who issued the ForceFinish the first time, which is what I thought we were after.
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John McDonald
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| praveenchhangani |
| Posted: Tue May 13, 2003 9:09 am Post subject: |
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Disciple
Joined: 20 Sep 2002
Posts: 192
Location: Chicago, IL
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Yes, I realize that John. However it is the same model and there happens to be a trend which is what I was after. In other words if there is 1 work item assigned to 5 people, and 3 people complete the work item while 2 force finish it; That '2 people' category is what I was curious about. Since this is something that runs regularly, this time when I DO turn on the audit, I will be able to get that information.
What I was originally confused about was whether or not there were any other ways apart from the audit(since that was turned off) to get that inforamtion. I got it now though! It obviously is pretty much impossible is what my impression is after I read everyone's thougts, but that definitely cleared up the confusion.
Thanks,Praveen
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Praveen K. Chhangani,
IBM Certified Solutions Designer -
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| jmac |
| Posted: Tue May 13, 2003 9:16 am Post subject: |
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Jedi Knight
Joined: 27 Jun 2001
Posts: 3081
Location: EmeriCon, LLC
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| praveenchhangani wrote: |
| Yes, I realize that John. However it is the same model and there happens to be a trend which is what I was after. In other words if there is 1 work item assigned to 5 people, and 3 people complete the work item while 2 force finish it; |
OK... Now I am really confused. If there is an activity that has 5 workitems generated, only 1 person can ever move that from a "ready" state into one of the "completed" states.
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John McDonald
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| praveenchhangani |
| Posted: Tue May 13, 2003 9:21 am Post subject: |
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Disciple
Joined: 20 Sep 2002
Posts: 192
Location: Chicago, IL
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True, but what the person does (i.e. force finishes) is what I wanted to detect. It simply in that, the next time the model is run it will be assinged to a particular person and with the audit turned on perhaps with some filtering I will be able to find out what this user did. Sorry didn't mean to confuse you with the 1 work item term that I put in the prior post. I really meant a number of different work items for a number of different people defined in workflow.
Does that clear things up a little bit?
Thanks,Praveen
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Praveen K. Chhangani,
IBM Certified Solutions Designer -
MQ Workflow 3.4. |
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| jmac |
| Posted: Tue May 13, 2003 9:26 am Post subject: |
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Jedi Knight
Joined: 27 Jun 2001
Posts: 3081
Location: EmeriCon, LLC
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OK, now I understand what you are doing.
Why you are letting an end user forceFinish workitems I don't understand. IMHO, this should be an admin function only.
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John McDonald
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