processInstanceId generation before starting instance

Flowable Engine
1

Hi,
I am using Flowable 6.6.0 and Spring Boot 2.3.9

I would like to leverage processInstanceId in order to query the runtimeService or the historyService to check if a flow has completed or not.
My use case is as follow:

  1. The client sends a document to a controller in my spring boot application.
  2. The application gives back a unique id that identifies the process instance.
  3. The client polls for completion using this id (preferably processInstanceId)

However I start the process programmatically in a controller through processInstanceBuilder.start() before sending the response to the client.
Is there a way to generate an instanceId from within the controller and then passes this instanceID to the processInstanceBuilder?

Thanks for your help.

2

For this purpose, the businessKey concept was added. You can pass the business key on instance start and correlate through it later on.

3

Thank you very much Joram. That’s what I was looking for.