What is recommended approach in case i have to remove an SDT Attribute Associate with workflow and i

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1. I have a SDT lets say SDT Employee.
2. And this SDT is mapped to Employee Appriasal Workflow.
Start -> SDT Mapping -> Fill Appraisal Activity --> Confirm Activity -> Submit
3. Not say i have some workflow instance created.
4. Now i understood that i have to remove one attribute from SDT Employee which is not required.
5. The attribute decided to be deleted is not mapped against any obj attribute
6. I back up my Workflow template using composer (SDT wll be with option ignore matching objects).
7. I remove the association of Workflow with SDT.
8. I delete the SDT Attribute.
9. I deploy back the Workflow from composer.

Question : Will Step 5 - 9 create problem to the existing workflow instance. Please confirm. What is recommended approach in case i have to remove the attribute and i donot want to break workflow instance created earlier.

please suggest.

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Comments

DCTM_Guru

Can I ask a simple question of why you feel you need to remove it? Leaving it there will not affect anything.

That being said, to safeguard against impacts to existing workflows, make sure you create new version of the workflow template.

AjoshGopi

Problem is we already have 30 Attributes in our SDT.

We need to add one more additional attribute. Doing the same result in run time error associated with dmbasic expression engine. I saw one support note which also stated that this is a limitation with expression engine, that it cannot process more than 30 attr in a respective SDT.

This called the need for identifying any attribute which is un-used. I did figure out some attributes which are not used. However was not very sure if removing that would break the existing workflow instances. Or if there is any other impact.

Kindly suggest. Thank you.

DCTM_Guru

Try this in DEV environment. As I said in my previous post, at the very least, you need to version workflow template if you dont want to impact running workflows.

AjoshGopi

Yes. I tried this in dev region and it works fine.

However one additional step to my initial post is that. After SDT Attribute was delete. I had to restart the Content Server.

Expression engine was giving error. Once all the activity was completed. It gave rise to a new question. "How do i move the SDT change to upper region" like Staging and Prod. Specially when attribute is getting deleted.

- Is it possible to move the changes via composer (i doubt this).

- Do i have to do the steps for removing SDT attributes manually as what was performed in Dev region.

Thanks.

DCTM_Guru

The SDT should be "carried" with the new version of the workflow template that you would package in DAR file and install in Stage and PROD.

AjoshGopi

Is it proven. I am not sure if this is possible as SDT do not have the option of versioning. It may either have to be over written or Ignored while creating the build. I need to do a POC for this and then update the thread.

xchen-eQlqL

Hi,

If you are sure that the element is no longer used by any activities, you can follow the steps here to remove it :

1. Be sure that the element to delete in SDT is not used anymore.

2. Uninstall the process template.

3. Remove the SDT from the process template.

4. Save the process template without validation.

5. Modify the SDT (delete old elements, add new elements if needed).

6. Put the SDT on the process template again with the same name.

7. Save, validate and install the template.

The only thing not to do is between step 3 and step 6, don't open Activity Inspector on any activities with a mapping which uses the SDT, this action will lead "Can not retrieve mapping rule" error and remove all the mapping rules, and as you know, no possibility make a "Undo" in Process Builder ...

Hope this can help.

Please make test on demo processes to validate before apply it on real processes, no support will be provided .

AjoshGopi

Hi Chen,Thank you.

I got these steps. However can you help me understand how to bundled the changes and move to my next environment. As far i have understood. If i delete an sdt attribute how should this change cascaded to next major environment.

xchen-eQlqL

Not sure that it will work fine with a DAR file.

If you simply delete an SDT element in the source docbase and install it through a DAR on the target docbase, I think if will leave the deleted element there on target. Just like if you delete an attribute on a type ...

The safe way seems to have Process Builder connected to the target docbase to make the job manually.

Or as Johnny said, we need to limit this kind of operations on DEV docbase.