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WorkFlow Designer Help
WorkFlow Engine
WorkFlow Engine runs on a server and is responsible for processing the accounts in the workflows. Your organization schedules the WorkFlow Engine to run at specified times using SQLAgent or Windows Task Manager. The engine runs for the specified time period (the default is one hour) or until there are no accounts in the event queue, whichever comes first.
Stages
There are three stages of processing when WorkFlow Engine runs.
Stage 1: Adds user-defined events to the event queue. WorkFlow Engine checks to see whether there are any user-defined events to process and if so, adds the accounts for those events to the event queue.
Note: WorkFlow Engine adds system events to the event queue as the events occur.
Stage 2: Processes the event queue. WorkFlow Engine reads the event queue in the order it added the accounts to the event queue. If set, the event configuration determines the initial priority for each workflow.
Stage 3: Starts the workflows. WorkFlow Engine starts the workflow and then creates lists of accounts for each activity or step of the workflow. The WorkFlow Engine Settings permission determines the number of accounts in an activity. This setting prevents WorkFlow Engine from updating too many accounts in a single process, and possibly causing concurrency issues. WorkFlow Engine passes the list of accounts to the activity for processing. When activity processing completes, WorkFlow Engine moves the accounts to the steps specified in the list, cleans up the used resources, and runs through the event queue again.
Related Topics
WorkFlow Permissions and Policies