Email workflow using WF4

Question

Firstly I am new WF (v4), but I can see the benefits, it's just the learning curve that is holding me back at the moment so I need your help.

Take my scenario, I have a business requirement to send a series of emails at various intervals. So I have created a sequential workflow in a workflow service with the appropriate delays between each mail send. The workflow is started by a Recieve call. This part seems to work fine.

However I want a have a second Receive call that effectively stops workflow so no more emails sent.

To try and achieve this I configured a Pick control with 2 branches. Branch 1 has a Receive with StartEmails which starts my delayed sequence of emails as describe before. Branch 2 contains a second Receive 'StopEmails, however my breakpoint never gets hit on the StopEmails Receive. I beleieve I have setup the correct correlation and CanCreatedInstance is set to false.

Is it that I can't make a second call while the first branch is in a delay (waiting) state?

Any pointers would be appreciated.

Answer 1

After a little more digging on SO, I believe I found my answer. see this post Workflow foundation 4.0 message correlation and error reporting

I was correct in my thinking that it was the delay in my first branch was what was blocking my second Receive request from being executed. Replacing my Pick with a Parallel container solved the problem. Makes sense when you think about it!

Parallel container to the rescue!