Process that cannot be started manually

Camunda 7 Topics Discussion & Questions
1

Hi all,
we need to model a process that can be started automatically (some event is triggered) but not manually. We also need to send to this process some details (start variables). We were thinking of using conditional, message or signal start events and also send the start variables values. What is the recommended approach?

Please advise.

Best regards,
Paul Palacean

2

Message Event would do the trick.
You can send a message along with a payload of data.

3

Hi @Niall,
let me explain what we’re trying to achieve. We have some process definitions and they are divided into two categories:

  • processes that can be started automatically (via a scheduler) and manual (user clicks on a button)
  • processes that can be started only automatically (for these clicking on a button should give an error message)

We would need an approach to differentiate between these 2 categories of processes somehow. We start a process by calling the REST API /process-definition/key/{key}/start. We were expecting that if the process expects a condition or message the REST call would fail, but it always starts a process instance. The same happens when we start the process via Tasklist app. We checked with message and conditional start events and they always start even if we don’t provide a message or a condition.

The easiest one we found so far is adding a process variable (onlyAuto) and check the presence of this variable for the process that we want to start. If the variable is present we would throw an error when the user wants to start it manually.

Is there a better way to do it? We would not want to add extra process variables if possible.

Best regards,
Paul Palacean

4

Well the easiest way i could suggest to help would be not to use that rest call to start the process - because it will ALWAYS start a process no matter what.
Instead you could use a message start event for all “manual starts” and use the message rest call instead.

So that would mean if you make the start by key REST call unavailable then it would not be possible to start a process that doesn’t have message start event.