Question

why would business process variable be blank when retrieving business process variables in workflow

Workflow Forms

Updated August 11, 2020

asked on August 10, 2020

I have run into this a couple times which makes me think i'm missing something foundational. So finally decided to ask...

i have form with lots of variables. when the user submits the form (we are using public access rights), the variables do show in the form submission--monitor instances--so i know they are being 'saved'.

the form is saved to repository. that is the only action in the form process.

now i want to use those variables in a workflow. i'm going to be specifically grabbing information and calling webservice to populate info in a database.

i set up retrieve business process variables action and run the workflow on a form that I know (from the forms instance submission) has a value in the variable. i track tokens at the end of the workflow.

i never see a a value in the variable. its as though it doesn't come over with the form.

what am i missing?

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Answer

SELECTED ANSWER

replied on August 10, 2020

At the end of your forms process, you need to start the workflow in order for workflow to know which specific instance of that forms process you are running. Use a workflow service task and specify which workflow you want to call, this should fix your issue. Note, the workflow will be run automatically so however you were starting it before is no longer needed.

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replied on August 10, 2020

Thank you for responding! I was a little afraid you were going to say something like that. do you know if there is a way for me to take the 1000 + forms that have already processed and just resubmit them to go through a process again that has that new Work Flow Service Task in it?

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replied on August 11, 2020

If the forms processes have already been completed, unfortunately there is no way to "re-run" the forms process.

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Replies

replied on August 10, 2020

I have run into this issue in the past with a large form with multiple tables. The issue was the my main field, something like ProjectNumber, was also the name of a variable in the tables. I forget what circumstances cause the primary field to get lost by WF (one filled the other not maybe), but the fix was to go into my tables and rename the variable slightly so that they did not match the version at the top of my form.

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replied on August 10, 2020

I may not be following you here. Are you talking about a variable in your form table that you renamed?

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replied on August 10, 2020

Yes. Here's a screenshot with a simple example. There is a "Step" variable on the form directly and one within the table. One of them should be renamed.

Note that if you rename one or more fields used within a workflow, you'll need to update the workflow to use the new variable name.

For what it's worth, I ran into this with Forms 10.2 and 10.3 with Workflow 10.2. I do not know if it's still an issue with 10.4 of each of those module.

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replied on August 11, 2020

oh. that is interesting. not actually the problem in this case but definitely something for me to be aware of. thank you

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why would business process variable be blank when retrieving business process variables in workflow

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