Restart

  • Release version: Washingtondc
  • Updated February 1, 2024
  • 2 minutes to read
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    Summary of Restart Build workflows

    The Process Automation Designer allows administrators to enable agents and fulfillers to restart playbooks, stages, or activities during runtime. This capability enhances flexibility in managing workflows, allowing restarts from the beginning or specific points within a process.

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    Key Features

    • Restart Options: Administrators can set playbooks to restart from the beginning, specific activities, or stages. They can also define the behavior of each stage or activity during a restart with three options:
      • Skip on restart: The stage or activity runs only during the initial execution.
      • Run always: The stage or activity executes in both initial and restarted runs.
      • Skip on first run: The stage or activity runs only during restarts.
    • Runtime Conditions: Playbooks can be restarted while in an active state, but not if they are complete, errored, or cancelled. Conversely, activities and stages must be complete to be restarted.

    Key Outcomes

    By configuring restart options effectively, administrators can ensure that playbooks function as intended, allowing for better task management and execution. Design considerations include avoiding setting the last stage to skip on first run and not grouping all activities that skip on the first run in one stage, as this may hide essential stages during execution.

    Give agents and fulfillers the ability to restart a playbook, stage, or activity.

    Overview

    In the Workflow Studio Playbooks builder, Playbooks administrators enable restart for Playbook Experience agents and fulfillers. Playbooks can be restarted from the beginning, or from certain activities or stages during runtime. Playbooks administrators also define what each activity and stage does when an agent restarts.

    Workflow Studio

    In Workflow Studio, Playbooks admins enable restart for playbooks, and define the rules for what an activity or stage does during restart:
    • Skip on restart: The stage or activity only runs during a playbook's initial run. It does not run on restart.
      Note:
      This setting is helpful if you don't want new tasks or records to be created during a restarted run, because the original execution and resulting record is still relevant.
    • Run always: The stage or activity always runs, whether during an initial or restarted run.
    • Skip on first run: The stage or activity runs only on restart. It never runs during an initial run.

    Playbook Experience

    During runtime, agents and fulfillers can restart playbooks from the beginning, or from certain stages or activities.
    Note:
    Playbooks in an active state can be restarted:
    • In Progress
    Playbooks in a terminal state cannot be restarted:
    • Complete
    • Error
    • Cancelled

    Restarting a playbook during runtime

    The opposite is true for activities and stages. Activities and stages must be complete before they can be restarted.


    Restarting a stage during runtime

    Design considerations

    Follow these design considerations when configuring restart for your playbook, stages, and activities.
    Last stages and activities
    Avoid setting the last stage or activity of a playbook to Skip on first run if there are no parallel stages or activities. If the playbook is restarted before the last stage or activity can run, the last stage or activity never runs.
    Stages
    Avoid grouping all activities that are configured to Skip on first run in one (1) stage. If you do so, the stage is completely hidden the first time that it runs. The stage must run twice to become visible.