The Workflow Engine creates a Alert whenever a Notification is delivered. At the time that the Alert is created, the Workflow Engine takes a snapshot of any Workflow Data Object values that are used by the Notification (for example, used in the Notification Subject, or Notification Body). This snapshot is stored as XML data in the wdoSnapshot attribute of the Alert entity. If the XML string exceeds 3900 characters, it is broken up into a sequence of strings, each with a maximum length of 3900 characters. These strings are then stored as overflow records.

When the Workflow Engine attempts to reconstruct the Alerts wdoSnapshot, it reads the wdoSnapshot from the Alert record and appends any associated overflow records.

Example

A workflow (Process Definition) is defined to inform the case supervisor whenever a customers payment details have been modified and send a letter to the customer. The activities defined in your workflow are:

• notification sent to case supervisor and letter printed.

Person John Smith's payment details change due to an increase in rates. This increase raises an event which causes the Workflow Engine to enact your workflow and create a Process Instance.

The system creates and executes the first (automatic) Activity Instance which prints out the letter and sends a notification to the case supervisor. The alert informs the case supervisor that the customer's details have been modified.

Technical Notes

See the Workflow Reference Guide for further information.