If you want to implement a Workflow that allows you to reprocess an IDoc a fixed number of times before an error-handling work item is started, for example for those errors that are temporary, for example, caused by an object being locked, ALE provides a means of keeping track of how often the IDoc has been processed. ALE allows customers to specify the number of retries individually.

The object IDOCAPPL’s (and hence all child object type’s) method InputBackground has an import parameter NO_OF_RETRIES which is set to zero by ALE when an IDoc is first processed. The method processes this parameter as follows:

• If it is larger than the maximum number of retries set in the inbound process code’s input methods, the parameter RESULT in the event inputFinished’s container is set to "99999".
• Otherwise, it is incremented by one and written to the parameter NO_OF_RETRIES in the event inputFinished.

To make use of this feature, you need to define your Workflow so that it has a parameter NO_OF_RETRIES in its container which is bound to the import and to the event parameter NO_OF_RETRIES, and so that it loops back to the InputBackground step unless the event parameter RESULT = "99999".