Error Handling for Background Work Items (SAP Library

Error Handling for Background Work Items

Use

Error handling for background work items must be carried out by the workflow system

because background work items (with errors) are not displayed in the Business Workplace and are therefore detected too late, if at all.
because background work items that are temporarily incorrect, for which another execution attempt can (theoretically) be successful, cannot be restarted by a user.

(Temporarily incorrect work items are work items whose method was terminated with a temporary exception for which no subsequent step has been defined.)

Features

In Customizing for the workflow system, you can define how often the workflow system attempts to restart a temporarily incorrect work item. You can also define the interval between two repetition attempts and activate the monitoring function.

Monitoring is also activated as part of automatic Customizing (Tools ® Business Workflow ® Development ® Utilities ® Customizing).

You can also specify the maximum number of repetition attempts ("repetition counter") separately for each individual background step in the respective workflow definition. This setting overrides the value in Customizing if it is greater than zero.

If an error (method exception) occurs when background work items are executed by the workflow system, the system responds as follows depending on the type of exception and error modeling settings:

In the workflow definition...	The exception is defined for the object method as a ...
	temporary error	system or application error

a subsequent step is modeled for the exception.	The step has status completed and the modeled subsequent step is executed. Background work items for which a repetition counter is explicitly modeled in the workflow definition are restarted first by the system. If all of the attempts are unsuccessful, the status of the work item changes to completed and the modeled subsequent step is executed.		The step has status completed and the modeled subsequent step is executed.
no subsequent step is modeled for the exception	The step is not yet completed. The respective work item retains the status in process. Background work items are restarted by the system. The number of repetition attempts is determined either by the repetition counter in the step definition or - if this is equal to zero - by the repetition counter set in Customizing. If all of the attempts are unsuccessful, the work item status changes to incorrect.	Workflow and work item assume the error status.

Processing Incorrect Work Items

The workflow system sends a mail to the relevant system administrator for every background work item with the status incorrect.

Processing Work Items That Have Been Started

The workflow system determines all of the background work items that have been in process for longer than 30 minutes. An error message is then sent to the workflow system administrator for all of these background work items, since the system assumes that processing has been cancelled. However, this does not necessarily mean that an error has occurred.