Purpose of this program is to progress any of the workflow activity which is in following status.
1.Deferred.
2.Time Out
3.Stuck.
This CP has 2 Required Parameters and 3 Optional Parameters.Majority of the customers schedule this CP at frequency any time between 3 minutes to 1 hour.
And most of the issues that I have heard about this CP are related to performance( Though another area where I heard complaint is this CP is not picking the lines that are in Deferred status , but I will not talk about that in this post , please check my other posts if you want to know more about reason why this CP is not picking lines ) .As per issues related to performance my take is this is a a stable program and work as per expectations if scheduled to run in proper manners. Based on my discussions with many customers I noticed that customer encounters performance issues because of the way they scheduled this CP.
Parameters for this CP are .
1.Item Type
2.Minimum Threshold
3.Maximum Threshold
4.Process Deferred
5.Process Timeout
6.Process Stuck
# 1
If we don't specified "Item Type" parameters then workflow background process will execute all eligible workflow across all the Oracle Modules (like OM/WSH/PO/AP etc.....) and that might rmeans processing 100s of lines (based on your transaction volumes) and hence poor performance. I don't see any business justification to run this CP with "Item Type" as Blank.
Best recommendation are
- Schedule separate CP for every Oracle Module and don't leave item type BLANK
- In case you really has need to run this program with Item type Blank then run that during off-peak hours ( in Night/week end)
#2
Do not run this CP with Parameter
4.Process Deferred = Yes
5.Process Timeout = Yes
6.Process Stuck = Yes
Why on earth someone want to process TOGETHER all the workflow that are at
Deferred, timeout and Stuck activity , especially when you have scheduled this CP for every 5 - 20 minutes range.(These are possibility that some of the activities that are Time out for valid reason and should not be process after every 5 minutes), but with the above setting CP will pick all the lines for processing , though lines that are Timeout etc will not be processed till they reach their timeout thresh hold ( but still picked).
Best recommendation are
It is good choice to process Deferred , Timeout & stuck activities separately .
Most of time business need is to process the Deferred records quite often and process Time Out/Stuck once -twice (at least not after every 5 minutes) in a Day
#3
Schedule this CP for a appropriate frequency. E.g if your volume load is to process 20,000-30,000 lines in 1 hour then it is good idea to schedule it after every 5 minutes .Scheduling it after every 1 hour with this much volume is not a good Idea.
IMPORTANT - Above are my view & experience
Note - Pls. Refer Oracle Apps documentations /Guides for More details.
If you need addtional details feel free to contact me at sgupta@bizinsightinc.com
