Feature - Sales Desk Trial Lock Logic to Prevent Locking Storm

Feature - Sales Desk Trial Lock Logic to Prevent Locking Storm

Release Date: 06/17/20
Version: 8.5 & Up

In larger Elliott installations with hundreds of salespeople and multiple warehouse locations to ship from, a special deadlock condition occurs in Sales Desk when multiple salespeople are competing for the same item (a very popular one). The deadlock can happen if the primary location does not have stock and the salespeople are competing for the secondary location's inventory. When the "deadlock storm" happens, the only solution is to kill the offending salesperson session on the PSQL monitor. In some situations, since many salespeople have  already committed to the creation of the order for the same item, killing the PSQL session for one salesperson will just result in the system substituting another salesperson.  So the admin may keep on killing the salesperson's session for many, many times until none of the salespeople are competing for the same item. 

We are making a change to Sales Desk. Before committing to creating the sales order, the system will now check to see if the all the items and inventory locations (when ordering from secondary locations) can be locked first.  If the system can't lock the item or inventory location record, then it will not commit to the order creation.  This change resolves the "deadlock storm."  We call this feature "Trial Lock." The following is an example that illustrates this new feature:

Step 1. The IMINVLOC record for Item# 0025 and Location G is locked, and the salesperson is trying to create the order containing that item: 
   
Step 2. The salesperson presses Enter on “Field Number?” in Sales Desk and tries to create the order.  The salesperson receives the message “Inventory Location 0025G Is Locked.” See sample screen below: 


Step 3. The salesperson presses “OK” on the locked message. The cursor goes back to “Field Number?” as in the first screen.  The salesperson can retry, but as long as the locking condition exists, the salesperson will continue to receive the locked message.

Step 4. Once the lock for inventory location Item# 0025 and Location G is released, the salesperson will be able to create the order from Sales Desk. See sample screen below:   



Modified Programs: CPQUOSCN, CPQUOTRY

EMK



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