WorkManager portal — Process Work workspace
How to process assignments in bulk with the My Process Actions area

To transfer assignments in bulk:

1. In the upper left area of the WorkManager portal, select the work pool name that contains the assignments to be processed.
2. Select an operator from the left Transfer work from drop-down list, or a workbasket from the right Transfer Work from drop-down list. These list all operators in a work group, or all workbaskets associated with a work group.
3. The workspace changes to present a list of assignments (in your current work pool) for that operator or workbasket. Click a column header to sort by that column. Indicate which assignments to transferring using the Select All button, Deselect All button, and check boxes at the left of each row. (If there are more than 500 assignments, the display is paged. Process the first 500 assignments first, then click Process More Items to process those on the next page, and so on.)
4. In the Reassign action area, select a destination operator or workbasket.
5. Optionally, select the Run in background? box to have this bulk processing performed as a background task by the Pega-ProCom agent rather than in your current requestor session. See About background processing.
6. Click Process Assignments. Foreground processing may take minutes or more, depending on the number of assignments to be processed. When processing completes, the system redisplays with worklist with a check mark indicating each updated assignment, or an for assignments not updated. To access an error message, hold the mouse pointer over the to view a ToolTip.
7. Optionally, click Process More Items if there are more assignments to process.

To process assignments for an operator in bulk:

1. In the upper left area of the WorkManager portal, select the work pool name that contains the assignments to be processed.
2. Locate two rows containing the label Bulk Process for. Select an operator from the upper Bulk process for drop-down list. These list all operators in your work group.
3. In the middle field of that row, select one Work Type from the drop-down list, or All Work Types.
4. Then select an action from the with actions list, for example Reject this work.
5. The presents the flow action form. Complete any fields with values that are appropriate for all selected assignments.
6. Optionally, select the Run in background? box to have this bulk processing performed as a background task by the Pega-ProCom agent rather than in your current requestor session. See About background processing.
7. Click Process Assignments. Foreground processing may take minutes or more, depending on the number of assignments to be processed. When processing completes, the system redisplays with worklist with a check mark indicating each updated assignment, or an for assignments not updated. To access an error message, hold the mouse pointer over the to view a ToolTip.

To process assignments on a workbasket in bulk:

1. In the upper left area of the WorkManager portal, select the work pool name that contains the assignments to be processed.
2. Locate two rows containing the label Bulk Process for. Select a workbasket from the lower Bulk process for drop-down list. This lists all workbaskets associated with your work group.
3. In the middle field of that row, select one Work Type from the drop-down list, or All Work Types.
4. Then select an action from the with actions list, for example Reject this work.
5. The presents the flow action form. Complete any fields with values that are appropriate for all selected assignments.
6. Optionally, select the Run in background? box to have this bulk processing performed as a background task by the Pega-ProCom agent rather than in your current requestor session. See About background processing.
7. Click Process Assignments. Foreground processing may take minutes or more, depending on the number of assignments to be processed. When processing completes, the system redisplays with worklist with a check mark indicating each updated assignment, or an for assignments not updated. To access an error message, hold the mouse pointer over the to view a ToolTip.

If you need to transfer or process dozens or hundreds of assignments, it may be preferable to send the processing to a background task, which can notify you when the processing is complete. The Pega-ProCom agent includes an activity that provides such processing.

To use this facility:

1. Review the Data-Agent-Queue instances on your system; there is one for the Pega-ProCom agent on each node. Ensure that the row identifying the AgentBulkProcessing activity is enabled on at least one node, and that the overall Enable this agent? box is selected for that node.
2. Ensure that an email account data instance (Data-EmailAccount class) is defined to send e-mail from your application.
3. For each manager who is to use this facility, ensure that a valid e-mail address is present in the Operator tab of the Operator ID form.
4. Complete input values for one of the My Process Actions facilities. Select the Run in Background check box.
5. Click Process Assignments. Background processing may take minutes or hours, depending on the number of assignments selected and other conditions.
6. When background processing by the Pega-ProCom agent is complete, the agent sends an e-mail message listing the count of assignments selected and processed, and a list of the keys of assignments not processed. (Bulk processing skips assignments for various reasons, including the inability to acquire a lock.)

How it works

When you click the Process Assignments button, the system creates an instance of the Assign-Schedule-Future class, which serves to notify the Pega-ProCom agent that a bulk processing request is pending. It changes the owner of assignments to be processed to the reserved value pyBulkProcessing, so that they are no longer on the original worklist or workbasket.

As it processes assignments, the Pega-ProCom agent temporarily creates instances of the Assign-Schedule-InterimResults class. When processing is complete, it forms and sends the e-mail message.

• Bulk processing is available only to users who hold the standard privilege Work-.PerformBulk.
• These features (and the contents of the with actions list) depend on the current work pool name and on the flow actions available for each assignment. For example, after you choose an operator in the Transfer work from list, only assignments for that operator that include the standard flow action Work-.Transfer (or a custom rule overriding this standard rule) appear.
• Four standard system settings rules (Rule-Admin-System-Settings rule type) affect background bulk processing. You can override them with other settings if necessary. See Atlas — Standard System Settings rules.
• Bulk processing may detect problem assignments. When this occurs, it sets the Instruction field of such assignments to the text value Error: Bulk.
• Some flow actions are not appropriate for bulk processing and do not appear on the flow action list. (To mark a flow action as inappropriate, select the Disqualify this action from bulk processing? field on the Action tab of the Flow Action form.)
• On the work object history display, the phrase "system on behalf of NAME" (where NAME is an operator full name) indicates that bulk processing requested by that operator occurred in background.

If your system accesses the PegaRULES database using a JDBC 2.0 driver, you may improve database update performance by enabling an optional driver capability for batched updates. This benefit also applies to external databases when accessed as external classes.

Not all JDBC 2.0 drivers correctly implement this capability. As of May 2007, Pegasystems has verified this capability with specific drivers including UDB 9.1 and Z/OS DB2. Other vendors are reportedly addressing compliance. Contact Global Customer Support for the latest information.

To allow Process Commander to use SQL prepared statements to batch updates for improved performance on row inserts, updates, and deletes:

1. To enable this feature for every SQL database, add the following line to the prconfig.xml file:

<env name="database/batchUpdates" value="nn" />

        where nn is a positive integer setting a maximum count for the number of rows to be batched.

2. To enable this feature for a single SQL database that is configured through the prconfig.xml file, add the following line:

<env name="database/databases/zzzzzz/batchUpdates" value="nn" />

        where nn is a positive integer setting a maximum count for the number of rows to be batched and zzzzzz is the name of the datasource. (You can't use this option when the database is configured on the Database form or through application server datasources.)

3. Redeploy and restart.

Typically, set a value between 5 and 30; vendor documentation and experimentation may provide guidance for a good value. Setting this value to 0 or 1 is equivalent to no batching.

When enabled, this feature applies to all processing — including any Commit operations of two or more objects — but may improve the performance of bulk processing by as much as 20 percent.