Why do workflow Join activities contain an Incomplete path?

GoBucks · ‎02-26-2015

I was wondering when a workflow Join activity's Incomplete path would ever be taken? (This activity has two output paths: Complete and Incomplete)

I have a Join that joins up the paths of 2 parallel tasks that occur after a corresponding Branch activity. Regardless of what closed state I set the 2 tasks to (Closed Complete or Closed Incomplete) the Join always continues down its Complete path. Never do I see when the 'Incomplete' path would be taken. In what scenarios is the Incomplete path utilized?

acretion · ‎02-26-2015

You can make it go down the incomplete path from a join, but in practice I've never needed to do it. The trick is to have some sort of fork before the join that can skip it. I've attached a screenshot of a test workflow I just made to show you what it looks like. The incomplete path executes if the join gets skipped from what I understand, rather than any sort of task state value.

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Rajkumar Sakthi · ‎04-16-2020

@acretion - Thanks much for the explanation. Just embedding your attachment for easy ref and to avoid file download.

Thanks

S Rajkumar

Community Alums · ‎02-06-2023

Here is a use case where I used the "Incomplete" path of the Join activity.

I have a workflow with concurrent approvals, so I am using Branch. However one of the approvals is not always needed. This caused an issue because the Join would wait for both approvals. If I use the "Incomplete" path, it will recognize that one approval is completed and follow the Incomplete path. I then have both Join paths going to the same activity. An example of this is below.