Processes in Creatio are a huge part of the platform being used almost all the time. But sometimes processes can be left running in the background forever if a user task is left unfinished, not only flooding the users task bar also on the records the task is for. User task process elements sit and wait for the user to do something with it. A few of the user tasks that could do this are emails, open edit pages, preconfigured pages, etc. These elements won’t let the process finish until the user completes the task, which leaves the task in the UI forever. It leaves the task in the tasks list, like this:
On record pages like this
If the user never completes these tasks, these will remain forever and become more outdated and only clutter the UI. However, we can add into the process to automatically cancel these after a set period of time.
To make the process automatically cancel these tasks after a period of pre-defined time has passed is pretty simple. When a process reaches the terminate (the red dot at the end), it will cancel any pending tasks in the process. To cancel the tasks, we just need to provide an alternate route for the process that waits for the period of time, then goes to the end terminate. If the user has already done the task, it will have canceled the timer. If the user never did complete the task, once the timer ends, it will end the process.
In the process we’ll have two different paths, one will go to the user task and the other will go to the “Wait for timer” signal so therefore whichever one finishes first will end the process. In my example the user will have to send an email but if they don’t complete it within 8 hours the timer will end the user task and process. It’ll look something like this.
Note, none of these paths have a condition. The process will take BOTH paths. One path waits for the user to complete the task, one route waits for the timer to complete. Whichever one completes first will allow the flow of the process to get to the ending terminate. Once it reaches the ending terminate, any pending tasks from the process will get canceled.
This may not work with every process or scenario but for simple ones like just sending an email it’s an easy way to have the process automatically finish so the email task doesn’t stay there forever cluttering the UI.
