You can use the CLI from within your tasks. This gives you some very powerful tools for controlling your suite and can even allow you to set up dynamic suites.
You can alter ecFlow variables (using alter), set particular tasks or families complete (using force), and even generate dynamic suites. To do this you could modify a definition file template and replace the modified part of the suite.
Alter examples:
alter
ecflow_client --alter=add variable GLOBAL "value" / # add server variable
ecflow_client --alter=add variable FRED "value" /path/to/node # add node variable
ecflow_client --alter=add time "+00:20" /path/to/node
ecflow_client --alter=add date "01.*.*" /path/to/node
ecflow_client --alter=add day "sunday" /path/to/node
ecflow_client --alter=add label name "label_value" /path/to/node
ecflow_client --alter=add late "-s 00:01 -a 14:30 -c +00:01" /path/to/node
ecflow_client --alter=add limit mars "100" /path/to/node
ecflow_client --alter=add inlimit /path/to/node/withlimit:limit_name "10" /s1
# zombie attributes have the following structure:
`zombie_type`:(`client_side_action` | `server_side_action`):`child`:`zombie_life_time`
zombie_type = "user" | "ecf" | "path" | "ecf_pid" | "ecf_passwd" | "ecf_pid_passwd"
client_side_action = "fob" | "fail" | "block"
server_side_action = "adopt" | "delete" | "kill"
child = "init" | "event" | "meter" | "label" | "wait" | "abort" | "complete" | "queue"
zombie_life_time = unsigned integer default: user(300), ecf(3600), path(900) minimum is 60
ecflow_client --alter=add zombie "ecf:fail::" /path/to/node # ask system zombies to fail
ecflow_client --alter=add zombie "user:fail::" /path/to/node # ask user generated zombies to fail
ecflow_client --alter=add zombie "path:fail::" /path/to/node # ask path zombies to fail
ecflow_client --alter=delete variable FRED /path/to/node # delete variable FRED
ecflow_client --alter=delete variable /path/to/node # delete *ALL* variables on the specified node