Hi Richard,
This may not offer anything more than what you already know, but below is my take on the UWL settings in regards to refresh rates. We also went through a 7.3 upgrade recently so I spent some time trying to figure it out. I hope it helps anyway.
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To clarify: Everything below is all in reference to what happens when a user has the uwl open on their screen and is just sitting there watching. If they actually process a work item from the uwl, or if they click the refresh button then it will refresh the UWL view at that time, and completed work items may not disappear (because they are cached) but they can’t be processed twice. Therefore the topic is fairly unimportant except for the people who may regularly process work items and keep the uwl open on their screen, waiting for things to appear or disappear automatically.
1. New parameters in 7.3:
The term “Real-time update” for the uwl is deceiving. It is really limited to the real time update of completed work items only. It doesn’t refer to a real-time refresh of the entire inbox for new work items.
Refresh Completed Items:
This is the definition in sap help: (http://help.sap.com/saphelp_nw70ehp3/helpdata/en/4b/a2d8d534212d1be10000000a42189c/content.htm
also see: http://help.sap.com/saphelp_nw73/helpdata/de/76/2d95eaaa9a4476be6e54695aa76f91/content.htm)
“Real Time Refresh (RTR) mechanism of UWL enables automatic update of the UWL task and alerts list. Thus, when items are set to status Complete, they are removed from the New and In Progress view in the UWL. You can configure UWL to refresh its tasks and alerts list at time period different that the minimum 20 second period. The user does not need to use the refresh function to update the inbox.”
If you process a work item in the uwl, it will either disappear immediately or at least become invalid for further processing from the “New and in progress tasks” – this is true even without the new setting. However if you switch the view to “Completed tasks”, then without the setting the completed item won’t appear until the next cache refresh. Whereas with the setting, it appears in the “Completed tasks” immediately. Big deal!
Backend Setting:
The OSS note 1286915 is also important in relation to completed work items (this is not mentioned in the doco)
“To activate the function in the back-end system, call transaction SWPA and select the 'Create Workitem Events for UWL' setting. After you do this, the workflow runtime system creates work item events when you exit or logically delete a dialog work item. The UWL can then use these events to update the worklists of the user.”
The relevance of this is that often work items can be cancelled or reserved by another user in the background. By turning on this option in the backend configuration, every time a dialog work item changes, the uwl will be notified. Providing you have also turned on the "Refresh Completed Items" option, it will pick up those work items and operate as described above. (but see notes below regarding how the view refresh works!)
Retrieve custom attributes using Primary Pull
This is a separate option for retrieving custom attributes that might be put into a custom uwl view – it doesn’t really have anything to do with the completed items setting above but maybe it is supposed to be part of the concept of real-time refresh?
(http://help.sap.com/saphelp_nw73/helpdata/de/32/3680bcbef34a408d49503529f413cb/content.htm)
2. Existing influences on the UWL refresh
Refresh parameter in the view:(https://help.sap.com/javadocs/nwce/ce71/uw/com/sap/netweaver/bc/uwl/doc-files/uwldtd.html#View)
The uwl portal iview nominates a default view that controls a lot of the display elements. In this case Here is a configured a custom view with the following definition:
<View name="MyDefaultView"selectionMode="SINGLESELECT" width="98%"
supportedItemTypes="uwl.task" columnOrder="subject, isEscalated,creatorId, createdDate, priority, attachmentCount, dueDate, status" sortby="priority:descend,dueDate:ascend, createdDate:descend" tableDesign="STANDARD"visibleRowCount="10" headerVisible="no"
queryRange="undefined"ableNavigationFooterVisible="yes"tableNavigationType="CUSTOMNAV"
refresh="300"actionRef="" dueDateSevere="86400000" dueDateWarning="259200000"
emphasizedItems="new" displayOnlyDefinedAttributes="yes"dynamicCreationAllowed="yes" actionPosition="bottom"referenceBundle="tasks">
The refresh parameter in the view defaults to 300 secs. This means that if you do nothing, then absolutely nothing will happen while the uwl is sitting there open until the next refresh in 5 minutes. The new "real time" parameters do not change this!
When I change the view refresh parameter to 20 secs, as hoped it does refresh what you see every 20 secs, and if a change has occurred to a work item such that it has completed, this will be reflected in the uwl by invalidating the work item.
Key point is that view refresh parameter is most important because until you refresh the view, nothing else happens anyway.
Cache validity: (http://help.sap.com/saphelp_nw73/helpdata/de/76/4116cf6d0049cea42c9de374f5b1bc/content.htm)
The cache validity is set in the overall uwl settings and is defaulted to 5 minutes. This setting is what controls the actual work items appearing in your worklist at any particular time. Any new work items will only appear in the worklist when both the cache is refreshed and the view is
refreshed. Even though the “real-time refresh of completed items” does invalidate a completed work item sooner (ie. Prevents ability to execute it) if it is detected, the work item doesn’t actually disappear from the worklist completely until the next cache refresh. Although it is possible to turn off the cache, there are warnings that this could cause a performance problem.
Delta Pull: (http://help.sap.com/saphelp_nw73/helpdata/de/4a/ee0563c8481358e10000000a42189b/content.htm)
The help says:
“Delta Pull mechanism of UWL enables new items to be fetched from the back end SAP systems every minute by default every 60 seconds. You can configure UWL to refresh its task and alerts lists at time periods different than the minimum 60 second period. The user does not need to use the refresh function to update the inbox. Once items are retrieved, timestamps are updated
for the users whose items are successfully retrieved. These retrieved items are updated in the UWL cache”
Delta pull seems to be the most efficient way to update the uwl cache for all users all at once, but we have seen various problems at customer sites in the past caused by delta pull. I would still recommend using the delta pull if we wanted the fastest and most efficient automatic and frequent refresh of the uwl cache.
Conclusion:
There is no real-time update in 7.3 for the uwl and it is a misuse of the term for SAP to call it real-time. Even if you turn on the new settings, they only refer to 2 very specific types of updates for completed work items and custom attributes in views.
If we are just talking about increasing the frequency of refreshing the uwl for a user who is sitting there watching it, then you would consider changing the parameters for the view refresh frequency and the cache refresh frequency, which are not new. Also regarding the cache refresh frequency, you may consider the delta pull to improve the way you update the cache. The new parameter for refreshing of completed items – on top of the other setting changes – could provide a small additional advantage in certain cases where work items frequently become invalid while the uwl is still open for the user.
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