How to Auto-Start Process for Every Project on a Daily Basis?

[Matthew Guercio]

Hello All -

Wondering if anyone knows a streamlined approach for automatically executing a process on a daily basis once per day and for every active project in the system?  The process checks if a custom Project attribute, "Days Remaining," is equal to or less than 0.  If true, the process sets the "Status Indicator" OOTB Project attribute value to "Red," and if false, the process completes with no further action.

Currently, I have the Start Option as Project = Update (no specific conditions), however this only triggers the process when a user makes a change on a project (i.e. updates any project object-related element).  However, because sometimes projects are not updated for a day, or few days, this approach will not completely satisfy my organization's requirements.

Any thoughts?  I understand XOG/GEL is an option, however I am not experienced enough to create that on my own, so appreciate any other ideas! :) 

Thanks in advance for your time and effort,
Matt

[Deactivated User]

There is the execute a process job.
See if you can create an on demand process which makes your check as your current process and execute it with the job scheduled daily (workdays)

[Matthew Guercio]

Hello @Deactivated User -
Thank you for the quick response.  I do not believe your recommended approach would work as the Process I need executed on a daily basis is associated with the Project object, and, the "Execute a Process" Job requires the Process to not be associated with any object.  Is there a workaround for running this Job using a Process associated to the Project object, or, an alternative solution for accomplishing my goal?

Thanks,
Matt​ ​​

[Deactivated User]

If that is the case I am not aware of any option. A process with a gel script would do that. You would SQL read minimum project data for XOGing and  the Days Remaining of one project at a time or if the number is very small then all having 0 at once. The you would XOG minimum project data with Status Indicator provided that it can be XOGed one project at a time of all at once if the number is very small.

[Abhisek Dhar]

Hi Matt, 

I do think the there is any option how you can schedule a process to run every day. Its either manual or triggering by some other actions. 
The first thing that comes to my mind when you say "I want to run a process every day at a certain time" is to call the process through a job. 
Because it is the Clarity PPM Jobs that can be scheduled like the way you are looking for. And Clarity PPM Jobs also gives you the option to execute a process. 

------------------------------
Abhisek Dhar
Senior Engineer
Clarity PPM Support
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[Matthew Guercio]

Hello @Abhisek Dhar -
Thank you for the quick response.  I do not believe your recommended approach would work as the Process I need executed on a daily basis is associated with the Project object, and, the "Execute a Process" Job requires the Process to not be associated with any object (see description in your image).  Is there a workaround for running this Job using a Process associated to the Project object?

Thanks,
Matt​

[Nick Darlington]

Your only other option than using GEL (there's a bpm tag library with a startProcess tag that can invoke a process with an object instance id) would be to (I suggest) create a custom attribute on the project like a Boolean for 'run daily process', leave it to false.

Build your process to have a start condition on active = true and run daily process = true.

Make a step of the process set the 'run daily process' back to false again (e.g. in the first or last step depending on your desired logic)

Then once per day batch/script a XOG to go through updating the 'run daily process' value to true.  This can be done outside of GEL and Clarity.

That should then trigger the process conditions to run, without it kicking off on every single project update.  It would be the technically easiest route to take without GEL.

It would be a lot better to learn/deploy the GEL based variant though, as it could more efficiently query just the active projects, and then directly issue a process start call against each one.  XOG call overheads for large numbers of projects puts some load on the application services.  There is a 'Tuesday Tips' thread in here somewhere with information on how to craft a GEL script to start another process that can be used as a starting point.

[Matthew Guercio]

Thank you @Nick Darlington, very helpful!​