Synchronize task start times

[Marshall Washburn]

Hello everyone!

We have  customer that wants, if possible, times for tasks set in parallel to always have the same start time. Most of the time, they are, but every so often one will be ahead or behind. An example run is below, the top task starts one second earlier.

They are requesting this due to wanting audit records to match processing records for our Accounts Receivable area, and would prefer for all times to always match. Is there a way to force these to all start running at once? Does an after-the-fact update need to be done to set that all to the same time?

Thank you,
Marshall Washburn

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Banner Developer
Clemson University
Clemson, SC
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[Pete Wirfs]

I can't think of any way to accomplish this.  Even if you ran a script like what I built here, I suspect the SAME ISSUE would still exist; There is no way to force three serial operations to occur at the same time.  Our machines are so fast we sometimes believe they are doing operations simultaneously, but in most cases, they really can't... they just do them so quickly that we believe they are happening simultaneously.

You could test the script idea and see if it does any better than the workflow controls do?  One drawback of this script idea though is the three statements will run their tasks asynchronously in the background and your workflow will complete and not wait for them to finish.

:set &Run1# = activate_uc_object(JOBS.AR.TGRRCON)
:set &Run2# = activate_uc_object(TGRAGES_NEGATIVE)
:set &Run3# = activate_uc_object(TGRAGES_POSITIVE)​

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Pete Wirfs
SAIF Corporation
Salem Oregon USA
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[Pete Wirfs]

The script idea also causes you to lose access to other workflow features, like precondition/postcondition, and parameter overrides.

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Pete Wirfs
SAIF Corporation
Salem Oregon USA
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[Pete Wirfs]

Regarding the idea of manipulating run history, then the integrity/validity of all of your run history could be brought into question.   (You would never want your auditors know!)

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Pete Wirfs
SAIF Corporation
Salem Oregon USA
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[Marshall Washburn]

Good point about the integrity, was just trying to think out loud. I'll see about the script idea, you're right, the parallel process is actually nested in another flow, so may not work without some post-condition on the script to check activities, which feels clunky to me.

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Banner Developer
Clemson University
Clemson, SC
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[Juergen Lechner]

Hi,

how could a processing record match to the start time of the job? Everything persisted in these jobs will have a timestamp later than their start time.

If you need something audit proof, why not linking all jobs to the runid of the workflow their are into?

Just my 2 cents
Juergen

PS: Cross-posting will not help you. So I have just copied that over from the AA board.

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Juergen Lechner
Senior Consultant
setis GmbH
Germany
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