Triggering workflows that take a few minutes

Hi,

I have certain workflows that when triggered take a while (like 2-3 minutes). These are a combination of triggered + Manual workflows. In this regard i have two queries :-

  1. Is there a way i can have a “Please wait for workflow to finish” message display and have the screen touch disabled so the user accidentally doesn’t trigger it again (thinking its not running since there’s nothing telling the user that workflow is running!) ?

  2. Can users after triggering this “longer” workflow(via a submit button), then immediately continue, using other sections of the app which could include running other workflows without worrying about the triggered longer workflow running in the background ? Like will this usage pattern break the workflow in the background ?

@NoCodeAndy @nathanaelb please guide :folded_hands:

Thanks

Set a Timestamp column 2 or 3 minutes in the future when the workflow is triggered, then disable/hide the Submit button whilst that timestamp is greater than the current time.

Yes.

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For the first part - Will this work in tandem with multiple users because 1 user might have triggered the workflow while 10 others might not have. So that 2 minute hiding of submit button should be for only that individual. Will i need to create a separate workflow to capture the timestamp each time a user clicks on the submit button?

For the second part - To confirm - “Yes” means it would work fine running on the background ?

Correct.

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The Timestamp column should be User Specific, or it can be a column in the User Profile row.
Multiple instances of the same server side workflow can run simultaneously, but I think the limit is 5. If there are more than 5, then I suspect (but not 100% certain) that they will be queued.

Aren’t all workflows in glide server side? Like we click on a button in the front end and then the back end database glide tables get modified.
Are you saying that if more than 5 users click on the submit button(that triggers a workflow around their respective data entries) around the same time, then all those extra clicks are going to glitch? or will they execute just after a while ?

App interaction workflows execute on the client device that triggered them.
All other workflows execute server side.

If there are more than 5, then I believe the extra one go into a queue, and get processed once a spare slot becomes available. Note: I’m not 100% sure about this. Somebody may correct me.

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If you don’t know, Darren, and if the information is not documented in Glide Docs, I’d be curious to know where such information can be found.

For most common questions, I search Glide Docs and the forum. I’ll trust Glide staff and a few of the experts.

But then beyond that, where or how do we confirm technical limits for sure?

I recall that David shared a demo on Slack a while back, where the concurrency limit of 5 was mentioned. But I don’t recall what was said happens when more than 5 at a time were triggered. Logically, you would expect them to go into a queue…

Ask Glide Engineering, via Support :slight_smile:

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