TMS Tasks can appear stuck at "Moving to next step" status after large submission of tasks

Tasks can appear as though they are stuck moving between workflow steps. There are occasions when this can be caused by system faults, but this article explains occasions when SDL TMS is busy processing large amounts of content and it may appear that tasks are stuck, but this is expected behaviour. 

Use System > Queued Actions to check to see what backlog SDL TMS currently has queued. If there are currently no queued actions, check the tasks in the job to see if these have now moved steps. If the tasks are still 'Moving to next step' this will require further investigation by SDL Support



You can also click on System > Services  to view the Workload page, this shows what SDL TMS services are currently processing, in the scenario mentioned particular interest should be shown for the Workflow operations. You can check for specific Tasks to see when they are being processed by SDL TMS. 

Most occasions this is related to a large system queue of messages that may be taking a while to clear. It's also possible that messages can fail or tasks can stop processing between steps.