Nested sequential and parallel activities

Stephane_Bouillon

Hi, I'm confused as to how activities contained in a parallel or sequential activity are triggered. In the below sequence, I would expect the activities in the IT Planning block to be triggered in parallel, and the items in the IT Preparation block to remain in pending until the first block is completed, given that both parallel activities are part of a sequential activity. Makes sense ?

Brian_Wiest

It might be something to do with the way you have things nested. Here is a screenshot from the console were I have nesting where the MA's withing PA's will kick off only when the PA is in progress. Not sure why your above screenshot has the PA's running at the same time but only the first MA in each. Hope my example provides some direction. 
When the workflow reaches each color set they go in progress at the same time.

Geoff_Ross

Hi @Stephane_Bouillon
I've no idea whats going on there. You are certainly right to be confused. Can we see it in the console so we can see the status of the parent Activities.

Also, its not 'wrong' and I don't think it caused this but there's not much point in putting your two PAs inside the SA because everything is by default sequential anyway. Unless its helping you with organisation or reporting etc, you need not have this. 

Stephane_Bouillon

I created the activities through PowerShell, not by using  a Template. So far this has always worked well with manual activities, and now I'm experimenting with a more elaborate workflow. I'll keep the PA's by themselves instead of creating a SA container. One thing I noticed is that I can not "expand" or "collapse" the SA and PA blocks, maybe I still need to set some property on them ?

Geoff_Ross

Ahhh, that could explain it. Did you set the sequence ID property properly when creating them.
Expanding a PA or SA in the portal just shows the Activities within. There is no 'form' to see.

Stephane_Bouillon

Hmm, is that Sequence ID a property on the activity ? In fact the activities are created by the Trigger SMA Script action which is an SMA runbook activity. How should I number them to execute correctly  in the order as displayed (but in parallel within each block) ?

Stephane_Bouillon

Almost there... I didn't expect the 1st activity in IT Preparation to be In Progress