Hi Charl,

I hope some other members will also post their comments but what I would do, is:

Keep an external (db or file) index of work item number.
In the code behind your destination rule...
* Read the index
* Increment it by 1
* Assign to User(index)
* If index > StringTable("maxIndex"), index = 0

In this way, there's not a lot that can go wrong. The only problem that I see with it is hardcoding the users but there MUST be a way around that.

Regards,
Ockert

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Hi Charl,

I had to pull out my old CS lecture notes on this one The algorthm you are looking for is called a "Round Robin" and there are a number of articles on the web describing the pros and cons of this algorthm. The last BPM software I worked with had such a construct as standard within it.

To implementation: you must take care of "blockage", i.e. a recipient not being available for some reason. You may also need to take dynamic recipient lists into account. This would point me towards using a AD group or user management component.

Using "out of office" and delegation routing components you should be able to overcome the "blockage" problem. Hell, if you do not care how overworked certain members of staff are or that you do not receive that million dollar payment this month due to someone being sick, you do not care about using these components

Given that your UM component always returns the static receipient list in the same order (you could always sort the list anyway) you only need to know the last recipient you sent to. The "count" attribute of the list indicates you are at the end of the list.

This solution would take care of Ockert's stumbling point of hard coding recipient lists as well.

When you have implemented all of this perfectly, you must provide me with the complete solution in source code packaged as custom activities and events for ease of use.

Hope this helps

Graham

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