ORACLE WORKFLOW Interview Questions Updated 2022

1. What is workflow and what are the benefits of using Oracle workflow?

Oracle workflow is a graphical tool that allows you to create, track and modify the business process, embedded in the oracle database server,  it can monitor the workflow activity statuses.

Benefits:

1) Create a clear business process definition

2) Automate the business routings

3) Monitor the process

4) Allow users to define their own business process to suit their organization’s needs.

5) Readily change the business process definitions in case of a change business process

2. What are the steps involved in oracle workflow?

Design & create a Workflow using Oracle Workflow Builder starts the Oracle Workflow process from pl/sql integrates Oracle Workflow with pl/sql for validation and DML etc.  Build Oracle Workflow Notifications attach roles/people to notifications in Oracle Workflow.

3. What are the steps involved in oracle workflow?

The workflow builder activities are Attributes, Messages, Process, Functions, Events. 

4. What are the modes we have in workflow function? 

RUN, CANCEL, SUSPEND, TIMEOUT, FORWARD, TRANSFOR.

5. How to load the workflow from one instance to another instance?

Wfload filename.wft, wfload username/password.

6. What are the Access Levels to be set for various requirements such as Read Only, Customizable etc..?

Each user of Oracle Workflow Builder operates the system at a certain access level.

The access levels are defined as follows:
0-9: Reserved for Oracle Workflow
10-19: Reserved for Oracle Application Object Library
20-99: Reserved for Oracle E-Business Suite
100-999: Reserved for customer organizations
1000: Public

To ensure that your customizations are preserved during an upgrade of Oracle Workflow:

Check your access level before you make your modifications to the predefined workflow process.
Oracle E-Business Suite: 100
Standalone Oracle Workflow: 100 or higher

7. How are Deferred Activities started again? 

The process can be restarted by the Notification System,such as when a user responds to a notification; by the background engine, such as when a deferred activity is executed; or by the Business Event System, such as when an event message is dequeued from an inbound queue and sent to the workflow process.

8. When will an activity be deferred in Oracle workflow?

Activity cost > Workflow Engine threshold

Activity is deferred when the activity cost is greater than the Workflow Engine threshold. If the activity cost = 0 or if the activity cost is less than the Workflow Engine threshold, the activity will become Active.

9. When do you need a selector for an item type?

More than one process associated with an item type, when you have more than one process associated with an item type, you need a selector to select a process. You use the Role Resolution standard activity to perform role resolution. Voting is another standard activity. Multiple result codes drive different transitions, but this is not related to the selector.

10. What is the primary purpose of a oracle workflow?

Routes information, Sends notifications, Defines process rules. The primary purposes of a workflow are to route information, send notification, and define process rule. Although some history is maintained automatically by Oracle Workflow, it will not be considered as creating audit trails.

11. How do I see the progress of the workflow process?

     1) Choose the Responsibility: Workflow Administrator Web applications

     2) Choose the Function: Find Processes

     3) Look for processes for your workflow (i.e. OPM Quality Sample Creation)

     4) Listed are the workflow processes; Find the one with the transaction id or date

     5) Click on the hyper link for the process.

     6) Click on “View Diagram”

     7) The diagram shows you the progress of the process.

12. How to force a Workflow activity to run in background?

The workflow background engine threshold is set to 50 by default. If you do not want the current job to run on-line then call WF_ENGINE.THRESHOLD:=n; (where n is less than the cost setting for the current job/activity), hence the workflow engine runs the job in background. 

You should set the threshold limit back to 50 in SQL*Plus or in the next function activity so that other activities are processed as expected.

13. How will you define the possible results of an activity in order to drive different transitions?

As lookup codes for a lookup type will define the possible results of an activity to drive different transitions using lookup codes for a lookup type. You cannot use item attributes. Separating the activity into two does not make sense since you want to drive two transactions with the same activity, but with two result codes. A process activity will not help in this scenario.

14. What are Synchronous & Asynchronous modes? 

Synchronous does not interaction with database.  

15. How does ‘Expand Roles’ work?

Expand Roles = N

If you have Expand Roles set to ‘N’ and you are sending a Notification to a Role Name, then a message is sent to every user in that role, and each individual user will see that Notification in their Notification queue until a single user in the role replies to that Notification.  After which time, the Notification is wiped from each user’s Notification queue.

Expand Roles = Y

If you have Expand Roles set to ‘Y’ and you are sending a Notification to a Role Name, then a message is sent to every user in that role, and each individual user will see that Notification in their Notification queue until they reply or close that notification.  

You will generally want to have Expand Roles set to ‘Y’ if you want to be sure that every user in a particular role sees the message. 

16. Can a workflow process be restarted from the point of failure?

Yes, Wf_Engine.HandleError is designed for this. When the cause of the error has been corrected, the HandleError.  Procedure can be called with the ‘RETRY’ option which will attempt to re-execute the specified activity.  

17. What electronic mail systems can I use in conjunction with Oracle Workflow Notifications? 

The Oracle Workflow Notification Mailer can be used in conjunction with Oracle Office/Oracle InterOffice (Oracle Internet Messaging 4.2 can be used with Workflow 2.5), UNIX Sendmail, or MAPI-compliant mail applications.

18. How do I set the application context/org? 

If your workflow is launched from a form then the application context will already be set (because it is the same sql session). However, if an activity gets deferred to the background engine then that context is lost. So when the workflow starts up again it won’t know what context to run in a 

To get around this, you should save any necessary values to item attributes when you first start the workflow (ex: save the org context). Then write a selector function to operate in SET_CTX mode which checks if context is set. 

19. How do I grant an application user access to the notification form? 

The Workflow Notifications function can be added to any menu in 10SC using the System Administrator Responsibility. The name of the function is Workflow Notifications, FND_FNDWFNOT. The function exists in AOL it just has to be added to a menu.

20. What does the Workflow Engine do when a function activity has finished?

Issue a savepoint, The Workflow Engine issues a savepoint when a function activity is completed. The Workflow Engine never issues a commit; the calling application issues a commit. The Workflow Engine does not generate a log file or notify users.