open-metadata--openmetadata/openspec/changes/incident-lifecycle-workflow/proposal.md

Incident Lifecycle Workflow

Slice 1 of 3 — Incident Manager → Governance Workflows Migration Depends on: Nothing (first slice) Enables: incident-auto-close, incident-ttl ADR: adr-incident-manager-governance-workflows.md

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What Ships

When a test case's incident status changes, a governance workflow reacts to the event — creating the Thread/task on new incidents and closing it on resolution. The workflow is a single branching definition that users can see and extend in the governance workflows UI.

User-visible changes:

• Incident Thread/task created immediately on test failure (no longer deferred to Ack)
• Auto-assign to table owner configurable (default: unassigned, matching current behavior)
• Incident lifecycle visible in governance workflows UI
• Users can customize by adding steps to workflow branches (e.g., notifications, Jira)
• Re-open from Resolved to any non-Resolved status creates a new incident lifecycle

Behavior preserved:

• REST API surface unchanged
• Ack and Assigned transitions unchanged in repository (assignee patching)
• TCRS record creation unchanged (synchronous, for incidentId linking)
• Severity inference unchanged (in repository)

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What We Build

Generic Task Nodes: openTask and closeTask

Two new generic governance workflow nodes, reusable beyond incident management:

openTask (nodeType: automatedTask, nodeSubType: openTask):

• Idempotently creates a Thread with configurable TaskType and TaskStatus.Open
• If a Thread/task already exists for the entity, it's a no-op
• Optional auto-assign via responsibles config (default: unassigned)
• Configurable via template (e.g., "incident", future: "review")

closeTask (nodeType: automatedTask, nodeSubType: closeTask):

• Closes an open Thread/task for the entity
• If no open Thread/task exists, it's a no-op

Both follow the three-layer pattern: Task (BPMN) → Delegate (JavaDelegate) → Impl (pure logic).

TCRS Event Broadcasting

Extend EntityLifecycleEventDispatcher to broadcast TestCaseResolutionStatus events to registered handlers. TCRS is a time-series entity that does NOT emit ChangeEvents, so this is a new event pipeline.

Flow: storeInternal() → EntityLifecycleEventDispatcher → WorkflowHandler → Flowable signal

Signal-Driven Workflow Triggering

Every TCRS event broadcasts a Flowable signal "tcrs_{fqn}" with the TCRS status as a process variable. The signal starts a new short-lived process instance in every matching workflow. No Flowable queries needed for routing.

Default Incident Lifecycle Workflow

Single branching workflow, ships enabled:

Trigger: Signal "tcrs_{fqn}" (from TCRS event broadcast)

[Signal Start] → [Gateway: status?]
    ├─ NOT Resolved → [OpenTask] → [End]
    ├─ Resolved     → [CloseTask] → [End]
    └─ Otherwise    → [End]

All process instances are short-lived in Slice 1 (no timers). OpenTask and CloseTask are idempotent — safe to fire on every event. The gateway routes purely on TCRS status; nodes handle their own edge cases.

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Out of Scope

Feature	Deferred to	Why
Auto-close on test pass	Slice 2	Independent feature, separate workflow
TTL / stale incident expiration	Slice 3	Timer subprocess with signal boundary
Timer subprocess + signal interruption	Slice 3	Architecture supports it, no timers yet
tcrs_closed_{fqn} termination signal	Slice 3	Only needed for timer subprocess interruption
Cleanup timer for orphaned processes	Follow-up	Batch sweep; idempotent openTask handles most
Custom lifecycle states	Future	Template-driven state machine evolution

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Open Questions

• EntityLifecycleEventDispatcher extension: What's the cleanest way to add TCRS event broadcasting? Observer registration, interface, or direct handler call?
• Thread/task creation: Does openTask create the Thread directly via FeedRepository.create(), or reuse TestCaseResolutionStatusRepository.createTask()?
• Signal payload: Can signal variables carry enough context (status, FQN, stateId) to avoid a DB read in the gateway, or should each node read from DB independently?