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Task States
Automation in HIRO™ is task-centric. Therefore, Automation Tasks are the central data objects to trigger the HIRO™ Engine. Automation Tasks have a lifecycle - they are created, processed and finally either succeed or fail. The following diagram illustrates the state machine of Automation Task status.
Figure 1. Task State Diagram
The black lines indicate transitions performed by the Engine, whereas:
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some transitions will be triggered only be Engine’s internal task handling
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some transitions can be triggered by special KI language commands
The transitions marked in red may be performed from the outside, i.e. by connectors or other applications.
- NEW
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New task which is ready to be processed by the HIRO™ Engine
For compatibility reasons a missing status value is interpreted as
NEW - PROCESSING
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Engine is currently working on this task to resolve it.
- RESOLVED
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Task processing has finished successfully. Technically that means: through application of KIs all ToDo variables have been deleted.
This is a final state.
- WAITING
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Task processing was suspended to wait for some external event (e.g. user approval). A task in that state must be set back to PROCESSING from the outside (by the controlling connector or other application).
- STOPPED
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Task processing has been stopped. In most cases this status means the Engine ran out of applicable knowledge.
This is a final state.
- TERMINATED
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Task processing has been forcefully terminated. This could be triggered internally by some error conditions (see below) or externally (e.g. Connector/CLI).
This is a final state.
Typical state transitions triggered by the HIRO™ Engine
| From state | To state | Trigger |
|---|---|---|
NEW |
PROCESSING |
successfully loaded task for processing |
PROCESSING |
RESOLVED |
no remaining todo variable in task |
PROCESSING |
WAITING |
KI command |
PROCESSING |
STOPPED |
KI command |
NEW / PROCESSING |
TERMINATED |
Processing node does not exist or is not accessible |
|
The Engine writes the reason of a status change into the
|
Which status changes can be triggered externally?
The transitions listed below are allowed to be triggered by connectors or other applications:
| From state | To state | Trigger/Reason |
|---|---|---|
PROCESSING |
TERMINATED |
External application (e.g. connector) decides then Engine should not process that task anymore. |
WAITING |
TERMINATED |
External application (e.g. connector) decides then Engine should not process that task anymore |
PROCESSING |
WAITING |
External application decides that Engine should (temporarily) pause processing that task (e.g. waiting for a user approval) |
WAITING |
PROCESSING |
External application decides that a task processing can now continue |
Relation to Knowledge Acquisition
When a task status is STOPPED, this means that there was not sufficient knowledge
to solve it. That’s why any task being in status STOPPED is a candidate for a
new knowledge acquisition session, and will be listed in the Task List in HIRO™.
The responsible Subject Matter Expert should teach the system how this task can be
solved the next time.