About quorums

On a Prompt action in the Application Event System (AES), a quorum is automatically calculated based on the number of recipients, the voting rule, and voting parameters such as Minimum. If there is a number of votes by whose tally a voting result can be determined unambiguously, that number is the quorum. Otherwise, the quorum is the total number of recipients, that is, everyone has a chance to vote unless a timeout expires. As soon as the quorum is reached, voting is closed, any remaining unvoted messages are expired, and the application event continues to the next event action.

However, if you specify a Quorum value, that overrides the automatic calculation. For example, if a message requiring a response is sent to 10 people, but you want a quorum to be reached when only four have voted, then specify 4 as the Quorum value.

By default, if Quorum is not specified or is specified with a positive value, Wait for Quorum is true; that is, the application event waits until the quorum is reached before it continues with the next event action. If Quorum is specified with a non-positive value, the Wait for Quorum default value is FALSE. If these settings conflict, for example Quorum is 3 and Wait for Quorum is FALSE, the system displays an error message.

If Wait for Quorum is FALSE, the application event does not wait for a quorum to be reached. As soon as the messages are sent, execution continues with the next event action. If the system is not waiting for a quorum, the event designer must determine when and under what circumstances enough votes have been received and exactly what further actions the system is to take. This can be done using VOTINGRESULT(), RESPONDERS(), RECIPIENTS(), and so on, in combination with the Wait or Sleep actions.