SAP Knowledge Base Article - Public

2547404 - Workflows got stuck in process and disappeared from todo list.

Symptom

  • There are a large number of workflows that are stuck in the INPROCESS status
  • As a result you are not able to perform any actions like: 'Approve', 'Decline', 'Update', 'Change Approver', etc

KBA1.jpg

Environment

  • SAP SuccessFactors HCM Cloud
  • Employee Central
  • Advanced Todo Page

Reproducing the Issue

AS ADMIN:

  1. Go to manage workflow request;
  2. Select the requested by or requested for;
  3. Select the status INPROCESS;
  4. Execute the search and see that you have several workflows in process;

AS APPROVER:

  1. Go to the to-do tile;
  2. Select multiple workflows (mass approval);
  3. Click approve;
  4. See that the next approver has nor received the workflow of if you are the last approver, the changes were not yet committed into the system;

Cause

So far we were able to address all the cases reported with this behavior as expected and this is because the customer is using mass approval of workflows.

Resolution

When the mass approval is used, these workflows are sent to a Job execution that will be the responsible for approving each workflow marked, to avoid that one workflow is manually approved of changed before the mass approval completes the status of the workflows are changed to INPROCESS which do not allow any processes like approve, decline, update, change approver, and so on;

This Job has an execution limit of 10 hours, which means that in case the workflow remains in process for more than 10 hours it will need to get changed back into a PENDING status so that the approver can then approve the workflow again.

All this means that after you use the masse approval, the time to get this completed may differ based on other jobs running on your instance, number of workflows approved and in worst case scenario it will get stalled for more than 10 hours being then reverted back to PENDING.

Please see below the sequence of how mass approval works:

  1. The approver can see n pending workflow in the advance todo page
  2. He/She can select/check all of them and click approve
  3. He/She should get a UI message like "The approval job will be scheduled"
    • It will take a while to process based in your jobs scheduled and number of workflows approved
    • The work flows will be removed from todo tile and pending request page
    • The workflow status change from pending -> "in process" temporally this way prevent the other user change the workflow in between
  4. A background job will pick up the approval action and finish the actual approval, it may take couple mins to hours depend on how many job in queue
  5. If the job started but the job cannot be finished, the workflow has error, the approver will get an e-mail to mention what happen
  6. If the job cannot be started for some reason, the approver will not get any e-mail. The workflow will remain in "in process' status for 10 hours until some one go to check
  7. From b1808 release onwards:
    If the workflow remains in "in process" status for 10 hours or longer:
    • To revert the workflow back to a Pending Status follow these options:
      • The approver or an HR Admin user (with the permissions) has to open the "Workflow Detail Page" found in 'Admin Center > Manage Workflow Requests' for the "In Progress" Workflow
      • This will release the workflows that have been pending for any time longer then 10 hours

Keywords

Mass Approval, workflow disappeared from todo, workflow disappeared from to-do, still in process , KBA , LOD-SF-EC-WFL-REQ , My Pending Requests, ToDo's & Mass Approvals , How To

Product

SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central all versions