Completion criteria

One of the following must be true for an activity to require transaction completion criteria:

• The activity must manipulate batch segments, multiple replies, or loops, and the activity must have one and only one destination, which must be an end flag.
• The activity must have one destination and that must be an unmonitored end flag. Additionally, the activity must either:
  • have one or more destination activity, which can be other activities or end flags. If the destination activity is an end flag, the activity must be monitored on output at the monitoring point not connected to the end flag.
  • process batch segments or multiple replies.
• The activity has a previous activity (it need not be the immediately previous activity) that generates an unknown number of segments.

If the activity meets the above requirements, then the transaction completion criteria types are determined by the following:

• If the activity manipulates batch segments, multiple replies, or repeats as a unit of work backout and retry, and it has only one destination, which is an end flag, then the criteria type is Number Of Segments/Replies.
• If the activity has no monitoring on input, then the criteria type is Input Update Timeout (ms).
• If the neither of the above criteria applies, then criteria types are One Field Value, Two Field Values, and Input Update Timeout (ms).

Using the Transaction Completion Criteria tab allows you to have an unmonitored end flag. There are any number of reason why an activity might have an unmonitored end flag (perhaps that part of the business process is not automated and is a manual process that does not come back into the transaction pathway).

Transaction pathway with an unmonitored end flag

Assume that your business is banking and that you want all transactions over $10,000 to be manually processed. At Activity1 a decision is made on whether the transaction is over $10,000. If it is, it goes to the end flag. If it's not, then it goes to Activity2 for further processing.

Without some form of completion criteria there is no way to determine which path all transactions over $10,000 took. Did it go to Activity2 or not? Using the transaction completion criteria assumes that any transaction that meets the criteria defined did in fact complete successfully. Until a transaction is marked as successful it continues to appear in the transaction table on the view. You can then select to either have the transaction time out, or if you monitor the activity on input, you can decide whether the transaction is incomplete based on payload data.

See also Completion-criteria-fields.