What are Exclusion Groups?

Exclusion Groups are a way used to group Actionflows that should not be running and limit their ability to run at the same time.

Where multiple Actionflows have the same exclusion group, only one Actionflow will be able to run at any one time. Attempting to run a second Actionflow, with the same exclusion group, will return a warning message and the Actionflow will not run. This applies whether the Actionflow is run manually or automatically using a schedule.

Exclusion groups are evaluated before any Actionflows are started. When an Actionflow with an exclusion group is triggered, if no other Actionflow with the same exclusion group is already running then the Actionflow will continue. The action will be considered to be using this exclusion group from this point until the Actionflow has completed.

Setting Exclusion Groups

1. Open an Actionflow and open its

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   _property_settings _property_settings nopanel true

2. Under Basic Settings, populate the Exclusion Group field with any text to indicate the group
   1. This field is case insensitive and can take any free text
3. Repeat this with other Actionflows to add them to the same Exclusion Group

Worked Example

Here's a worked example using the Company Data (available from the Learning Centre).

In this example, we are using:  

• A Company Orders screen containing two grids of the Orders and OrderLines data - this screen was created using the Multi-tile template

Example: Setting an Exclusion Group

In this example, we'll add two Actionflows to the same exclusion group to see the warning that appears when triggering both Actionflows at the same time. This example is just for demonstration purposes.

Actionflow Setup

1. Open the Company Orders screen
2. Open the Actionflow on the Edit button and open the 

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   _property_settings _property_settings nopanel true

3. Under Basic Settings, populate the Exclusion Group field with any text, e.g. Orders
4. Repeat these steps with the Actionflow on the Add button on the Company Orders screen
5. On the Actionflow on the Add button, create a

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   _action_calculate _action_calculate nopanel true

    action with an Output Attribute:
   1. Name: Delay
   2. Type: Integer
   3. Expression: sleep(20)
      1. This will add a delay into the Actionflow for demonstration purposes. See sleep
6. Insert the Delay Calculate action onto the connector between the 

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   and 

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Testing

1. Open the Company Orders screen
2. Press Click Add then immediately click Edit
3. The warning message will appear
4. After 20 seconds, the Order Form will open