Practical implications of using "end" activity

[EllyL]

Hello,

I've understood that it's good practice to always use an "End" activity to free resources and improve overall performance. However, I find the information regarding the "End" activity to be conflicting, and I wonder if someone could help clear this confusion up?

Many thanks in advance,

Elly

• Use End activities for every workflow. This lets Adobe Campaign free up temporary space used for calculations within workflows. For more on this, refer to: Start and end .
  https://docs.adobe.com/content/help/en/campaign-classic/using/automating-with-workflows/general-oper...
• The Start and End activities allow you to graphically mark the start and end of a workflow. These activities have no functional impact and are therefore optional.
  https://docs.adobe.com/content/help/en/campaign-classic/using/automating-with-workflows/flow-control... 

[ParthaSarathy · Accepted solution]

Hi @EllyL ,

Yes, the end activity is a graphically mark for the end of a workflow.

It has No functional impact like query or split or like any other activity. But, Ofcourse If we use end activity at the end of the Workflow, it will free up temporary space of that workflow.

Example, Consider You have a workflow ((Start-> Query ->Split -> )) and if you wont enable 'Keep the result of interim population between two execution' in workflow property, You wont be able to see the record in between query and split activity by giving 'display the target'. It will show 'Unable to read data, table has been purged'.

But you can see the data in the transition coming out from split, Which means the temporary table data got purged in between 2 activities, whereas it is not purged at last open transitions. And we can notice workflow will be in paused state.

So when we use end activity at end of the workflow, all temporary data will get purged. You wont be able to see data between split and end activity by giving 'display the target'. And workflow will be in finished state.

So it is a good practice to use End activity at end of the workflow.

Regards,

ParthaSarathy S.

[EllyL]

Partha! So nice to see you! I miss you big time

[EllyL]

Partha! So nice to see you! I miss you big time

[EllyL]

Thank you so much for your response, you're always (as you know) so pedagogical and clear and helpful in your responses. I think this confusion might be a language-thing. I believe there's a huge functional impact (given how resources are consumed, as can be seen in your example) on the system if workflows are not optimized. I don't think the End-activity should be optional, and I think that the adobe-docs should change their information regarding that they are optional... It's the only thing that makes sense when reading your response. Thank you again and I hope you are well