Why put activities between Receive and SendReply instead of after them in Workflow Service

Question

Most of the examples that I've seen on Workflow Services put activities between the Receive and SendReply activities. However, if the activities take a long time to complete the service timesout. I could increase the timeout or put the activities after the SendReply. Is there a best practice on where to run these activities?

Answer 1

There is no need to keep all activities between Receive and send reply. Your activities will be executed after completion SendReply activity. For a log running process send reply can send its client message related that service is started or any exception. Workflow will be executing after sendreply completion.

You can follow this approach..

1. Put receive activity  as first activity on the workflow.
2. Apply validation on Data contract used as argument.
3. Put a code activity that can set WorkflowinstanceID  in out parameter that can return as response from send reply. This is can
be used to control Workflow.
4. Add another send reply by right click on Receive activity, return response if any validation faults occur.
5. Put rest of activity below of send reply configure service behavior for any unhandled exception.