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No status transitions for classic workflow tasks

  • 1.  No status transitions for classic workflow tasks

    Posted Feb 24, 2016 03:48 PM

    Hi everyone,

    Since there aren't any status transitions that you can define for classic workflow tasks, is there any other way to make the assignee field required when the status is changed to one of the completed statuses? (complete, skipped, cancelled etc).    If I just make the field required on the form, I'm thinking it will require that field to be completed when the task is created, which isn't going to work.

     

    Thanks,

    Tammy



  • 2.  Re: No status transitions for classic workflow tasks
    Best Answer

    Posted Feb 24, 2016 04:05 PM

    There is a Status Transition capability in Classic Workflow. If you open the status on a Workflow Task tab 2 provides the ability to link a Site Defined Condition to the status that must evaluate as true for you to be able to select that status. You also get to provide the error message that is displayed when the condition check fails.

     

    Hope this helps.

     

    Andy



  • 3.  Re: No status transitions for classic workflow tasks

    Posted Feb 24, 2016 06:15 PM

    It's actually a little different from that. You put the condition on the status FROM which you want to transition only when the condition is true.

    For example, you would put the condition on the "Pending" status that says Assignee must not be empty. This would prevent changing to another status until that is true.



  • 4.  Re: No status transitions for classic workflow tasks

    Posted Feb 25, 2016 10:26 AM

    You are correct. I just did a test. This is not what the online documentation says though. The documentation states it is tested before the Behavior Macro Condition is tested. Anyways it does work the way you stated it.

     

    Andy Buist

    Sr Services Architect

     

    CA Technologies | 125 Commerce Valley Drive West Suite 800 | Thornhill, ON L3T 7W4

    Office: +1 289 695 7402 | Mobile: +1 613 363 2250 | Andy.Buist@ca.com

     

    <mailto:Andy.Buist@ca.com>Please consider the environment before printing this e-mail.



  • 5.  Re: No status transitions for classic workflow tasks

    Posted Feb 24, 2016 10:22 PM

    Wow, thanks to both you and Lindsey... I see that now.  I was looking for something on the status definition, and should have thought to check the status on the actual task.  But... that means you have to define this for every task in every category, right?   So if you have 20 different tasks that are used in 50 different categories, and there are 3 statuses per task to modify, that's 3000 times you have to make this change?   Shouldn't this instead be something that you set once on the status and it's applied on every task that has that status?

     

    Thanks.

    Tammy



  • 6.  Re: No status transitions for classic workflow tasks

    Posted Feb 25, 2016 09:14 AM

    Yes this has to be applied to every task on every Category. I agree it is a lot of work. I have spent a number of hours updating behaviors on tasks on hundreds of categories during an upgrade.

     

    I agree that in concept it sounds like a good idea to have these kinds of things defined at the task type but in reality people reuse the same task type for similar tasks that have different requirements. It might be nice if you could provide the defaults, like you can with the behaviors that are applied to a task type. This still would not apply to all existing copies of that task type.

     

    Andy Buist

    Sr Services Architect

     

    CA Technologies | 125 Commerce Valley Drive West Suite 800 | Thornhill, ON L3T 7W4

    Office: +1 289 695 7402 | Mobile: +1 613 363 2250 | Andy.Buist@ca.com

     

    <mailto:Andy.Buist@ca.com>Please consider the environment before printing this e-mail.



  • 7.  Re: No status transitions for classic workflow tasks

    Posted Feb 25, 2016 05:44 PM

    To me, it just makes more sense to have the WF status transitions work the same as they do for I/R/P, where you define the required fields once on the status for each ticket type, and that requirement applies to all tickets of that type.  If I need the assignee field to be populated before the task can be marked complete, I'm going to need that for all of the WF tasks.

     

    Thanks,

    Tammy



  • 8.  Re: No status transitions for classic workflow tasks

    Posted Feb 25, 2016 11:54 AM

    Unfortunately, it is one of the drawbacks to the classic workflow: no re-use of code. In classic workflow, if you have 10 Change Categories with the same workflow you have to define it 10 times.

    This is where the power of Process Automation Manager for workflow really comes in handy.



  • 9.  Re: No status transitions for classic workflow tasks

    Posted Feb 25, 2016 05:52 PM

    Yes, I'm aware of some of the drawbacks to the classic workflow.  It's pretty cumbersome to set up, since you have to add your statuses to all of the tasks each time you add them to a category, instead of defining the statuses when you create the task.  But once you have it set up, it works great -- and for those of us who don't need complex workflow and don't have the time to learn the more complicated PAM option, we're glad that classic workflow is there to use!

     

    Thanks,

    Tammy



  • 10.  Re: No status transitions for classic workflow tasks

    Posted Feb 25, 2016 06:41 PM

    Tammy,


    You should not need to add all your statuses to your tasks when you define them. If update the task type with the standard statuses for it will populate these as the default whenever you add that task type to a Category. As we are discussing we cannot add behaviour details such as this and action macros but you should not need to add all the statuses each time. 


    Andy



  • 11.  Re: No status transitions for classic workflow tasks

    Posted Feb 25, 2016 07:11 PM

    You're right -- I misspoke.  I haven't had to create one of these in awhile, but what I was thinking of is having to repeat the steps to edit the statuses after adding the task to the category to have them do things -- like editing the 'pending' status on each task to send a notification, editing the 'reject' status on the approval task to tell it to cancel the CO if the approval task is rejected, editing the 'complete' status on the group end task to make the CO automatically close when all tasks are done.  Instead of defining these once when you create the task.  So that's the same type of thing as editing certain statuses to make the 'assignee' field required. 

     

    Thanks.

    Tammy



  • 12.  Re: No status transitions for classic workflow tasks

    Posted Feb 25, 2016 07:56 PM

    Hi Tammy,

     

    it would be very handy to be able to propagate new behaviours to a range of change categories.  I have done some scripting to copy an entire category between environments (e.g. from Test to Prod) - the code could probably be adapted to the purpose since it deals with the same data structure, but there's quite a lot of Perl involved.

     

    Regards,

    James



  • 13.  Re: No status transitions for classic workflow tasks

    Posted Feb 26, 2016 07:07 AM

    Hi James,

     

    That would be making a field required on the change order when the change

    order status is set, right?  What I was wanting to do was to was make the

    assignee field required on the workflow task.

     

    Thanks,

    Tammy