A soft lock is a lock that a user (or other requestor) has held by for too long, based on timeout parameters, and so is marked by the system as "expired." While locks ordinarily can be released only by the requestor who holds them, soft locks can be stolen from the requestor by another requestor.

Typically, locks are acquired and quickly relinquished, a few seconds or minutes later. For example, a user may open an assignment, select a flow action, complete the Perform form, and submit the form, taking a few minutes for the entire business transaction. The work object remains locked for this duration.

For example, soft locking prevents business bottlenecks that can arise when a user opens a work object but leaves the workplace for the day without saving the work object.

	lock
	Understanding object locking

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