Concurrent Workflow Activities - setting the order or creation?

[miked_jones]

When creating a workflow (say for a Catalog Item) where you have a number of concurrent activities (say, creating 10-15 catalog tasks) is there a way to set or otherwise influence the order in which those tasks are actually created so that the task numbers would "flow" in a somewhat logical order? I understand - concurrent means they all trigger at the same time, but the customer still feels like they should show up in a certain order in the list.

The only work-around I could think of is to put a number in the short description and have them sort on it, but of course they don't like that idea.

The maddening thing is that it does look like tasks are created in the SAME order each time, but I can't quite seem to figure out what is driving it.

Any ideas?

[Ashutosh Munot1]

HI Michael,

We can have them in some specific sequence. For that you need to decide what is a sequence you want to create a task

For example you can have one task say A created first then on completion of this task We can create Task B and so on.

See below Screen shot:

Thank you,

Ashutosh

Please Hit Correct, Helpful or like,if you are satisfied with this response.

[miked_jones]

Thanks for the Reply, unfortunately, I'm not talking about sequential tasks, but rather the order of creation of Concurrent tasks (after a branch). It seems like the order in which tasks are created is randomly set when the workflow is published. For example, with this workflow:

I get tasks all created at the same time, but the actual order is random. When you sort the task list by actual task number, the order might be 3,,2,1,4. Then if I go and check out / publish the workflow again, the order may have changed to 4,1,2,3. I get all 4 tasks, just in a random order each time.

[Ashutosh Munot1 · Accepted solution]

HI Michael,

In this case we cant determine the way this task will be created.

But i have a solution to this. I dont knw if it will acceptable or not.

Just put timer before each task and let the task get created after couple of seconds.

OR just give Number in Short Description as you are doing now.

Thank you,

Ashutosh

[miked_jones]

Thanks again for the input.

Yep, I came to the conclusion that, with concurrent tasks, the order really is randomized every time you publish the workflow. So, I took the approach of using timers in some situations and otherwise making the tasks actually sequential, but un-checking the "wait for completion" check box so that all tasks in a work-stream would be generated, then at the end adding a "wait for condition" and checking that all tasks are actually closed before actually closing the workflow. Silly, but it works.