How to Get Most Current User View Before Checking In.

Question

Hi,
We have several custom workflows which users can start from end-user menu and have some resource accounts created/modified after approvals.
User view is checked out once at the beginning of each workflow, then some user attributes are modified through forms and user view is checked in with new attributes at the end.
If any user starts a workflow (say W2) before completion of another workflow (say W1) he started before, and W1 is completed when W2 is waiting for approvals or etc., W2 completely discards changes made to user view through W1 since it has already checked out the user view before.
If I checkout the user once more just before checkin, I'm able to get a current user view but this time changes made through forms used in the current workflow are lost.
What's the best way, to get an updated user view of the user without overwriting any changes made out of the running workflow and losing form data?
Regards,
Mehtap.

Answer 1

In a situation like this, you should probably change the front end to store the changes in workflow variables instead of using the view directly. Then, post approval, you checkout the view and apply the changes. I've used this approach to perform changes on large numbers of users (kind of like a bulk action, only more reliable).
Alternatively, you can checkout the user object at the beginning of the workflow, and this will prevent your race condition by putting a lock on it. This will obviously cause problems (for you) if your users expect to be able to do multiple changes simultaneously. Don't try this approach if an angry mob will storm your cubicle -- IDM coders are hard to come by.
Jason