Can you order the sequence in which Lifecycle Events activities trigger?

[Elyse Eckert1]

Hello,

I understand that activity sets can be triggered based on a dependency, but is there any way to order or sequence how activities fire within those activity sets?

Hypothetically, if an HR process required every activity to generate in a specific order, I would need to make each and every activity its own activity set. It just seems odd not to be able to specify a sequence for a particular group of activities.

Or maybe I am just not understanding. Any insight would be appreciated. Thank you.

[michaelj_sherid]

Hi Elyse,

Activities themselves cannot be sequenced with an Activity Set. There is an option to sequence tasks within an HR Service if this fits your use case. At the end of the Day, Activity Sets or HR Services are the ways you can sequence tasks.

Regards,

Mike

[luca_]

Yes you can trigger the activities sequenced by putting them in a activity container.
The trigger order is defined by the order value of the activities.
Activities with the same order will be triggered parallel.

Here is the documentation: https://docs.servicenow.com/bundle/utah-employee-service-management/page/product/human-resources/tas...

[Tim Deniston]

Within a given activity container, Activity 1 must be completed before Activity 2 is created, correct? Is there any way around that (having all activities within the activity container triggered sequentially, but not waiting for the previous activity to be completed)?

I think the original question is asking why the HR Case records (for example) are not created in the same order as listed in the Lifecycle Event config. 

Here's an example: 

I cloned the New Hire Onboarding LE that is part of the demo data. The Pre-Hire activity set has the following steps (among others):

When I trigger the LE, I would think the cases generated from this should be ordered like this:

• HRC0000001 Account Notification
• HRC0000002 Drug Screen
• HRC0000003 Background Check
• HRC0000004 New Hire Documentation

Instead, we get something like this: 

• HRC0001127 Account Notification
• HRC0001131 Drug Screen
• HRC0001128 Background Check
• HRC0001129 New Hire Documentation

For the sake of consistency and sensibility, these should always be produced in the same order and be sequential based on the order listed in the LE Activity Set. Five years after this question was posted, we still don't have an improvement in this regard. 

I may have a simple update that can address part of this issue, specifically for activities that trigger an HR Case and are not in a container. In the script include "sn_hr_le.hr_ActivitySet", a new line can be added to the "

_getAllActivitiesExceptContainerMembers" function (I added a new line at 1586). This can be added, which will cause the activities to be sorted in a pre-determined way:

grActivity.orderBy('display_order');

When I run the lifecycle event with that in place, it consistently creates the HR case records that are triggered by the HR Service activities in the order that is set in the Display Order field. 

Is there any reason to not leave this customization in place? It seems like a simple fix to a common problem.

[VaranAwesomenow]

very good thought @Tim Deniston