Collaboration Job Modes

   Journey Manager (JM) The transaction engine for the platform.  |    System Manager / DevOps  |  All versions This feature is related to all versions.

Manager has two processing modes for collaboration jobs: standard and process immediate. Depending on the mode, the form bundles, reviews and approvals workflows are processed differently and they also have different licensing implications. The processing modes are configured in a job definition of each collaboration job's job service.

Let's take a look at these processing modes.

Standard Mode

The standard mode is used to execute the review and approval collaboration jobs. When a user completes and submits a form, Manager starts the standard form submission processing, which calls a job and runs a callback that marks it as ready for processing. This collaboration job runs in a thread, with a delay up to 60 seconds, that executes the callback.

When selecting this mode, consider the following:

• Pausing a scheduler job stops the collaboration job controller from processing all collaboration jobs it has been running.
• Form submissions and scheduled jobs are processed in separate threads so user experience is not affected.
• There is a delay, up to 1 minute, from the time when the submission is completed and the time the submission processing is started. This delay can cause some issues for form bundles when tasks are immediately assigned back to the same user, or during review and approval demo in the non-production environment.
• Easier development and debugging process. If a scheduled job fails during execution of an action, you can change this action configuration and retry it until the action is completed.
• Supports automatic retry and recovery.
• Use it when there are many participants in the collaboration job.

Process Immediate Mode

The process immediate mode is used to execute form bundles, such as customer onboarding forms. For example, a new banking customer fills out an initial form which has some common fields and a list of products. They select the products and submit the form. After that, they are presented with a list of forms to complete, one for each product. A scheduled job runs as a user thread that performs the following:

• The standard submission processing.
• The callback to make the job ready for processing.
• The next part of the collaboration job instead of the collaboration job controller.

When selecting this mode, consider the following:

• Pausing a scheduled job stops the collaboration job controller from processing all collaboration jobs it has been running, but it doesn't stop processing of collaboration jobs running in the immediate mode, so they will be completed.
• Using form bundles where there is a single participant completing all tasks.
• Using collaboration jobs with form chaining, but with only one form per each step.
• Running a demo of review and approval collaboration jobs in non-production environments.
• Debugging is difficult, because a transaction is associated with the whole form submission, which is the user's thread. If an error occurs, steps, actions and collaboration job event logs are rolled back.
• The collaboration job processing adds time to the submission completion. The designer needs to be mindful of how long it takes to run the next part of the job to prevent long waiting times for the form user. Form bundles may take an extra 3 - 10 seconds, because they create form tasks, which is an important step before the tasks can be chained to the next available form.

Next, learn how to view collaboration jobs.