Catalog Requested Item workflow not waiting for end of Service Catalog Request

[Les1]

Mystery anyone?

i'm troubleshooting an issue with our service catalog, specifically an Order Guide.

My understanding:   Service Catalog Request workflow should End before the Service Catalog ITEM request workflow begins, is this accurate? Somehow I or other has made a change that is breaking this expectation. The ITEM workflow is getting triggered despite the Service Catalog Request workflow not being completed, just wondering some ideas for me for investigating. 

our Service Catalog Request workflow is not OOB.  And in it there is a Task creation happening that is meant to be waited on for completion prior to allowing the Service Catalog Request to continue.

Desired state: 

1. Service Catalog Request initiates approval
2. Upon Approval, initiate Task 1 and Wait.
3. Upon Task 1 completion, proceed to end of Service Catalog Request workflow
4. RITM workflows triggered for all rule base catalog items etc.

Current state: 

at step 3. above, the workflow gets to the Wait.

4. while in Wait condition for Service Catalog Request, the subsequent RITM workflows are or have already been triggered (not yet sure about timeline - its possible they triggered right after the Approval step. I know they do not trigger prior to the Approval step)

Thank you for ideas about where i should be looking that would break the requirement for RITM to wait on the Service Catalog Request to complete.

[Allen Andreas]

Hello,

Can you describe more about your wait?

Do you mean you have the checked "wait for completion" checkbox...within the task?

Can you share a screenshot of your request workflow?

Right now, unfortunately, we're missing some information to help fully say what is happening.

Have you went up the REQ level of a RITM involved and clicked "show workflow" UI Action on that (near the bottom) to see that the request level workflow you're talking about is even running/working?

Does the task get made?

We're not getting clear information what is or isn't working from the request workflow adjustments you made other than that the RITM is running already.

Was it working before? And you're saying just with your order guide it's only a problem?

What adjustments was made to the REQ workflow?

Again, many questions are listed here due to missing information.

If the stage that the task is being made, is not appropriate, the workflow can considered itself complete and move on.

Thanks!

Please mark reply as Helpful/Correct, if applicable. Thanks!

[Les1]

Being that the workflow is convoluted and would be tough to maintain any brevity i was trying to focus on the areas that exhibited a symptom in case i could find an OOB functionality that was being impacted by our workflow, per the question around can RITM workflows be 'normally' triggered even if the Service Catalog Request workflow hasnt ended (in my mind the latter was dependent on the former). And your suggestion about Stage is kinda what i was after and is helpful as something i can try to investigate. thanks!  The construct for this was done by a 3rd party that we dont use anymore so is kind of a struggle for us to dig in and figure out.

here's some more detail though per your questions.

Also, to clarify, this is happening in sub_prod while we were making updates to an onboarding Order Guide & related catalog items. In PROD it works as expected. I have compared the two workflows, and at least in the relevant looking activity items there are no differences.

Here's the Service Catalog Request (SCR) workflow showing where it does get to a "wait" activity after the Create AD task activity. The Create AD task activity does not have the Wait for Completion flag set to true (but neither does our PROD) For grins i did set it to test effect, and the only impact was that the SCR workflow pauses at the Create AD task (but still the subsequent RITM workflows are getting triggered).

The SCTask output of the Create AD Task activity does occur, but so does all the other RITM related SCTasks that are not intended to occur until the SCR completes (as in our situation we need the Create AD Task to have been completed as a pre-req).

you asked about what the "Wait" looked like:

see below, I finally figured out that 'Onboard Status' is a custom field on our Request table. it has two choices: Onboard status and Pending Provisioning. I'm uncertain as to why the condition includes "none" as an option (again referring back to being built by external help not around for asking- but it does work as expected in our PROD)

The issue is seen only in the Order Guide as our order guide is used in the context of the affected part of the workflow. If it was just a request for some other catalog item it would bypass the section of the workflow with the Create  AD and just End with the request_state = Approved and the subsequent RITM workflow starts.

I realize the level of customization may be out of scope to what can be handled via community forum, any tips or advice is welcome. I'll keep digging..

Thanks Alan

[Allen Andreas]

Hello,

It's Allen 😉

All of the questions I asked were Helpful for us (the community) to try and understand your scenario, so thanks for taking a moment to answer most of them.

What did you all change to the order guide and catalog item on your sub-prod instance?

The problem here is that if this exact same thing is working on Production...and you all changed something in sub-prod and now it's not working. We don't know what you did. So all we can do is ask questions to reverse engineer the issue and start to walk it backwards.

Unfortunately, it may not be as simple as you asking a question and we point and say: Here "business rule xyz" is the problem.

So we have stuff to ask stuff like all the questions above and then...:

-What did you all change in sub-prod this time? Could any of those things be the cause?

-How is the onboard status field being changed? Is it happening in that set values activity before the task creation? If that is happening before the AD Account activity...why is there a wait for condition then?

The overall issue is, something has changed, obviously, so the environments aren't the same.

So with workflows...they glitch out a bit when you stack activities together back to back and not let it breath (not that you're doing it on purpose, just speaking in general). So you go from an approval right through to an IF activity, a set values activity (which needs to be explained -- see my question above), to a task (with no wait for completion flag set on it) right to a wait for condition activity.

Anyways, let me know the answers to those questions above, thanks.

Please mark reply as Helpful/Correct, if applicable. Thanks!

[Les1]

Ha, sorry "Allen" not Alan  (think i juxtaposed your first & last name last time)

what changes? yes i'm trying to reconcile between prod & sub-prod, this order guide and its many catalog item triggers have been getting overhauled over this last year (been an arduous process). its just that in the areas that seem most directly impacting the symptom i'm not finding difference. I reached out here for investigation tips and to check if  patching may have altered platform behavior in a way that may explain the symptom.  (last patch is glide-madrid-12-18-2018__patch10-hotfix1a-04-06-2020)

"Onboard User Status" - i discovered that there is a business rule that triggers if a sc_request comes through that has Onboard Status = "Pending provisioning"  WHICH can only happen via that Set Onboarding Status workflow activity from the Service Catalog request workflow.

i agree with you that sometimes back to back activities can be problematic, i've actually seen that first hand in the past. i didn't build this particular workflow originally .. perhaps adding some Wait timers may be helpful (even if doesnt fix this particular issue)? if so point me out to where Wait timers might be particularly beneficial and how long of a timer?

Thanks again for all advisement. I know this is Knowledge week so appreciate that you've given time to my questions!