A “Place Holder” step is just a pass-through step for organizing in the case of some workflow designs, and it is especially important to use in some circumstances where a synchronized step is used.  Here is a good example of where a placeholder step is needed in a workflow routing a task whose results lead to a synchronized step: 

In the given scenario, if Manager 1 rejects the task, an email is then sent.  This design poses a problem as all incoming connections into a synchronized step must be executed before the workflow can progress, leading to extended turnaround.  In this case, the synchronize step has 3 incoming connections but only 2 will ever execute.  The 'Place Holder' step is introduced to address this issue.  It acts as a bridge, ensuring that all incoming connections to the synchronized step will execute on time and as scheduled. This is just one scenario where the 'Place Holder' step proves its worth.

About the above diagram, connections from the Manager 1 approval step are connected to the “placeholder” step and then continue to the synchronize step.  This design guarantees that all incoming connections to the synchronize step will be executed on time and as scheduled.  This is only a single scenario, but there are many other scenarios that the “Place Holder” step helps with.

In previous versions of FlowWright, some of our customers were using the 'Decision' step to simulate the 'Place Holder' step using an expression of '1==1', where the decision is always evaluated to 'true' and passes through. However, this approach resulted in a performance hit. This performance issue is resolved through the use of the new 'Place Holder' step, which provides a more efficient solution.