What is Asynchronous Activity Completion?
Asynchronous Activity Completion is a feature that enables an Activity Function to return without causing the Activity Execution to complete. The Temporal Client can then be used to both Heartbeat Activity Execution progress and eventually provide a result.
When to use Async Completion
The intended use-case for this feature is when an external system has the final result of a computation, started by an Activity.
Consider using Asynchronous Activities instead of Signals if the external process is unreliable and might fail to send critical status updates through a Signal.
Consider using Signals as an alternative to Asynchronous Activities to return data back to a Workflow Execution if there is a human in the process loop. The reason is that a human in the loop means multiple steps in the process. The first is the Activity Function that stores state in an external system and at least one other step where a human would “complete” the activity. If the first step fails, you want to detect that quickly and retry instead of waiting for the entire process, which could be significantly longer when humans are involved.