Paralell activities in playbook

[iap]

I'm using Process Automation designer to create a Playbook for CSM and I'm trying to have 2 activities happen at the same time in a lane. That was achieved by using "Start rule = After Previous" in one of them and "Start rule = With Previous" on the other.
The problem comes with the next activity. I need it to start only after the other two finish, but since the options only refer to "Previous", it's only waiting for the latest one. I see that on the Activity definition there is an additional Start Rule = "After Activities", but if I try to select it I get "Invalid start rule for activity. Valid start rules: With Previous, Manual, After Previous, Immediately"
Anyone with experience on this that can shed some light?

[Pranit k]

We were facing the same issue for playbook activity sequencing. Did you find any solution for the same?

[iap · Accepted solution]

Hi Pranit,

We didn't find a way to use the Start Rule = "After Activities", but we found a workaround:

To have the activity right after the parallel ones to way until both the other two finish, we started a new lane:

Lane 1 (Immediately)	Lane 2 (After Previous)
Activity one (Start rule = immediately)	Sequential Activity
Parallel activity one (Start rule = After Previous)
Parallel activity two (Start rule = With Previous)

This way, "Sequential activity" only starts after "Parallel activity one" and "Parallel activity two" are both completed.

I hope this helps 🙂

[pranit]

We have requirement: based on activity 2 is completed then activity 3,4,9,10 and 12 will need to start, but activity 9,10 are in 2nd lane and activity 12 in 3rd lane. 

for ex.

Lane 1 (Immediately)	Lane 2 (Immediately)	Lane 3 (after previous)
activity 2 (After previous)	activity 9 (with previous)	activity 8 (Immediately)
activity 3 (with previous)	activity 10 (with previous)	activity 12 (after previous)
activity 4 (with previous)	activity 11 (with previous)	activity 13 (after previous)
activity 5 (After previous)

how we can achieve this?

[iap]

Hi Pranit,

I'm not sure it can be achieved keeping the lanes as they are, we didn't find an alternative to using the lanes as "breaks".

The solution I see here would be to rearrange the activities as follows:

Lane 1 (Immediately)	Lane 2 (after previous)	Lane 3 (after previous)
activity 2 (After previous)	activity 5 (after previous)	activity 8 (after previous)
activity 3 (After previous)	activity 11 (after previous)	activity 13 (after previous)
activity 4 (with previous)
activity 9 (with previous)
activity 10 (with previous)
activity 12 (with previous)

Kind regards,

Irene