SAP® Business Workflow

Dynamic Parallel Processing

Sometimes we need to process a dialog step (activity) several times in parallel and we may not be aware of how many times exactly this step has to be processed. Consider this scenario: For a sales order, we need to check the available quantity of the line items (materials). For each value of this list, a particular function has to be performed. So we need to create different work items for each material. This is called dynamic parallel processing, since the number of line items is known only during runtime.

To achieve this, follow these steps:

1. We need to define a multiline container for the material.
2. Go to "Others" tab of the dialog step (activity)
3. Enter this workflow container element on this tab.

Restriction : The multiline element should not contain more than 99 values. At runtime, the workflow system generates from the step as many parallel work items as there are values in the multiline container element at that time. The number of values need not be known at definition time. If the table is empty, this step is ignored.