Work Tracking

This page covers work tracking for workspaces and the integration builder.

Work Tracking is a feature used to postpone the processing of work until a later date. Work items are used to represent a piece of queued work and are usually grouped by date. You can also use it to batch the processing, meaning waiting until there is a specified time or number of data objects to package that will send the event to trigger the flow run.

To open the Work Tracking page and see work items for a given workspace, either select Work Tracking in the left navigation panel from the workspace menu, or select the integration name in the integration builder and select Work Tracking.

You can see work items and add work request to both the workspace or the integration. Work requests at the integration level must have automatic batching. Work request types without automatic batching are generated by the flow runs, when the workflow adds the work item to the definition.

Any changes made to an integration work request will affect only that workspace.

Example Scenario

Let’s say for your organization, purchase order files are created several times per hour. Instead of processing each file immediately, you can use work items to keep track of each created purchase order. Then schedule a flow to run every hour to fetch all unresolved work items (the unprocessed POs in this case) and process them all at once, resolving the work items when complete. You can also set up a batch job to run the flow once the limit for the batch has been reached.

Viewing Work Tracking Details

You can view work tracking details by navigating to the Work Tracking page from the workspace menu.

Several flow steps facilitate this process, including Create Work Item, Get Work Items, and Resolve Work Items.

Select a Work request type to view all the groups that exist for that type.

The work tracking screen in App Xchange

Select a Work request key to view the work items for that key.

The work item screen in App Xchange
Work items are grouped by data object. The group name comes from the Connector and Data Object fields in the Create Work Item flow step configuration. Each work item displays the following information:
  • Work request key: Displays the name of the work item.
  • Created on: Displays the date the work item was created.
  • Accumulator details: Displays how many work items are currently batched and the countdown to timeout if any. Select Batch now to immediately process the batch without waiting for accumulation or timeout. This is particularly useful for testing and demonstration purposes.
  • Batch details: Shows the number of open and closed work items in the batch.

Select a work item to view its past batches.

The work item batch screen in App Xchange
Drilling down on a work item displays the following information:
  • Work request key: Displays the name of the batch.
  • Created on: Displays the date the batch was created.
  • Items: Displays a progress bar summary for each batch.
  • Select the down arrow icon at the end to access the following options:
    • Resolving Work Items: Loads the flow that generated the work item.
    • Run now: Runs the current Staged version of the flow using this batch. Work item statuses will remain unchanged at time of flow trigger.
    • View Runs: Loads the Flow Runs Tab page for the the flow that generated the work item.

Select a work request key to see the details of the work or batch.

Add or Modify a Work Request

Create or change a work request type to specify what you want to track or batch.

  1. In your workspace, select Work Tracking.
  2. Choose one of the following:
    • To add a work request type, select Add Work Request Type.
    • To edit a work request type for the workspace, select the work request type and then the pencil Edit icon. For the integration builder, select the pencil Edit icon.
  3. In the Display name field, enter or change the display name.
    The name should make it easy to identify the type of work being tracked or batched in the flow.
  4. Optional: In the Key field, enter or change the key value.
    If you don't enter a key value, one will be automatically generated for you.
  5. For the workspace, if you plan to wait until there are many data objects to process, select the Enable Batching checkbox then complete the following prompts.
    1. In the Timeout in minutes field, enter or change the timeout threshold.
      This is how long App Xchange will wait before running the flow containing the batch work request.
    2. In the Items per batch limit field, enter or change the batch limit.
      This is how many data objects need to accumulate before the flow is run.
  6. Select OK.
The work request is created or modified. If the work request was added through the Integration Builder, you will see a managed tag on the request. Changes to the work request for the integration builder are unique to that workspace.
You must sync the workspace in order to see the work tracking integration.

Remove or Reset a Work Request

Removing a work request sends it to the archive. It will be removed from your work tracking page and any workspace.

You can reset a modified integration work request to the original values in the workspace.
  1. In your workspace, select Work Tracking.
  2. If this is for the workspace, select the work request type.
  3. To remove the work request, select the trash Delete icon. Select OK in the confirmation window.
  4. To reset the work request, select the arrow Reset icon. Select Reset in the confirmation window, then perform a sync.
The work request is removed or reset.

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