Dependencies behavior

Workflow dependencies in the HCL Universal Orchestrator policy-driven plan have been updated to match the plan improved flexibility.

Dependencies behavior

The HCL Universal Orchestrator policy-driven plan constantly creates new workflow instances, some of which are activated in a customizable time window. When you create a workflow to run for multiple days, the workflow instances created for a customizable time period (default is one day) are called activated workflows and all other workflow instances scheduled for the future are called non-activated workflows. The dependencies for the activated workflow instances are resolved, and the dependencies for non-activated workflow instances in the plan are re-evaluated and determined.

This re-evaluation process for non-activated workflows run automatically every time a new workflow instance is activated or when a new task is submitted. You can set the criteria the re-evaluation process has to follow:

The workflow instance closest to the definition is chosen. This is the default option.
The workflow instance that is scheduled to run in the same day of the instance whose dependency is being re-evaluated is chosen.
A workflow instance that is scheduled to run in a user defined time window is chosen.

As the plan is adaptive and self-generating, you can modify the dependencies of a single workflow instance, "JSEXAMPLE", and all the "JSEXAMPLE" future non-activated instances are instantly modified as well, letting you manage your plan quickly and efficiently.

The HCL Universal Orchestrator policy-driven plan performs an ‘always on’ clean up process to free up disk memory and to improve the HCL Universal Orchestrator by letting you focus on useful data. Completed workflow instances are cleaned up as the time pass without disruptions. In order to make the clean up process run efficiently, as the deletion of resolved workflow is performed, their dependencies are not updated. The dependencies are then skipped as no match is found. The HCL Universal Orchestrator handle missing predecessors’ dependencies without failure. Dependencies without predecessors are shown to the user depending on their status:

Satisfied dependencies are not shown to the user.
Unsatisfied dependencies are shown to the user with specific names. This allows users to inspect the dependencies even if no detailed information about the predecessors can be found. Users can interact with unsatisfied dependencies with actions like remove or release.

The HCL Universal Orchestrator supports the following types of dependencies:

Internal dependencies.
External dependencies.
Join dependencies.
Time dependencies.

Note: When you replace or substitute a task with dependencies, in a workflow, delete the dependencies first. Then deploy or save the workflow definition before replacing or deleting the existing task. If not, an error is returned when you try to add a new task with dependencies, to the workflow.