Forum OpenACS Q&A: Continuing script processing after returning template page

I have a page that receives a post and then performs a lot of complicated processing for which the user does not need to wait around. I would like to return a page saying the request is being processed and then continue on with the processing.

Originally I thought I could just call ad_return_template at the point in the tcl script where I had done enough processing to generate the page for the user. However this does not seem to be the case.

Is there a way to do this in conjunction with the templating system or do I have to go back to writing a tcl script and using ns_return which I understand does this ?