Hi Chuck,
Thanks for this info. We have ITSM 7.0 installed, patch 8 and the tasks are a serious problem for us. Busy making your recommended changes to our dev environment so that we can test. Kind Regards, Basil Webster Remedy Developer Siemens Southern Africa IT Solutions and Services (Pty) Ltd Infrastructure Operations 300 Janadel Avenue, Halfway House, 1685 T : +27 11 652 7523 F : +27 86 506 2883 M : +27 82 452 9389 [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> www.siemens.co.za ________________________________ From: Action Request System discussion list(ARSList) [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Charles Baldi Sent: Monday, October 26, 2009 5:32 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Task Flow bugs corrected ** All, For anyone who is using the Task Flow engine in Change Management in more than a trivial way, you may have encountered bugs that prevent a built flow from behaving as expected. We did. After several unhelpful and time-wasting discussions with BMC support, we tracked-down and fixed a handful of bugs in the Task Flow engine. Context: ITSM 7.0.03, patch 008. Hoping this may be useful to others, here are the corrections that we made and why. 1. Filter "TMS:TAS:Bypassed_MarkFlowTo_NotFollowed" The If Action - Push Fields was setting the Flow Status to "Flow Followed" rather than "Flow Not Followed" as its name says. This was causing a flow that should be bypassed appear as if it was still active. The correction was to modify the Push Fields to set Status = "Flow Not Followed" ==> This was the principle bug we found. Fixing this caused the bypass of Task Groups to function properly. 2. Filter "TMS:FLW:Bypassed_TaskEvaluate`!" The Run If qualification was looking for Status = "Flow Followed" to check for bypassed rather than "Flow Not Followed". No doubt this bug was hidden because of the first one above (or created because the first one could not be found.) The correction was to change the Run If condition to check for Status = "Flow Not Followed". 3. Filter "TMS:TGR:Bypassed`!" This filter was not properly setting the DO variable "zTmpInternal" when a Task Group within another Task Group was being bypassed. When this happened the change of Status to "Bypassed" was being interpreted as a user input change which caused the filter "TMS:SHR:Inactive_StatusLock" to generate an error. This caused all pending flow updates to roll back leaving the flow unusable. The correction was to add zTmpInternal = "Yes" to the third Push Fields If Action. 4. Filter "TMS:FLW:CheckForOtherFailedFlows" I consider this a defect. In a merged flow (i.e., a Task with multiple input flows) if ANY input flow was bypassed, this filter caused the task and all downstream flows to also be bypassed. This is not the behavior I expect. When I have Flow To Successor when = "All Complete" (in the flow definition) I consider a bypassed input flow to be a completed flow. Therefore if any input is closed normally, then the multiple-input task should be activated normally. The multiple-input task should only be bypassed if ALL inputs are bypassed. This is important because using "Any Complete" in the flow is not an adequate solution. I want the multi-input task to activate only when all inputs are completed or bypassed. Setting the flow to "Any Complete" would allow the task to fire prematurely. The correction was to DISABLE the filter. 5. Filter "TMS:SHR:varSetNameAsSourceForLabel". Despite what its help text says, this was only setting the source field for a data label if the data variable was an OUTPUT. We need the labels to be set when they are INPUT as well. My correction was to copy the filter and add the opposite condition, in this case ('zTmpVariableID' != $NULL) I hope this saves someone some time and pain. Regards, Chuck Baldi _Platinum Sponsor: [email protected] ARSlist: "Where the Answers Are"_ ________________________________________________________________________________________ Disclaimer and Confidentiality Note This e-mail communication, its attachments, if any, and any rights attaching to it are, unless the context clearly indicates otherwise, the property of Siemens Limited. It is confidential, private and intended for the addressee only. If you are not the intended recipient and receive this communication in error, you are hereby notified that any review, copying, use, discloser or distribution in any manner whatsoever is strictly prohibited. Please notify the sender immediately that you have received this e-mail in error and delete the e-mail and any copies of it. Views and opinions expressed in this e-mail are those of the sender unless clearly stated as those of Siemens Limited. 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