How do I amend a workflow?

I am attempting to change the timestamp on a workflow after the approval email has been sent to the user and before the user has approved the workflow. Basically, i want to be able to give the user the option to select a new deployment time/date.

I am pretty new to tinkering with the workflow. Anyone any ideas?

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Adam Stoller

I am attempting to change the timestamp on a workflow after the approval email has been sent to the user and before the user has approved the workflow. Basically, i want to be able to give the user the option to select a new deployment time/date.

I am pretty new to tinkering with the workflow. Anyone any ideas?

Your description is a bit confusing - workflow is generally the template, a job is generally an instance of the workflow which has been instantiated.

Assuming that, you're asking about being able to adjust some date/time stamp associated with the job - again, this is a bit vague, so I'll assume you mean that you have a dummytask (or similar) sitting between task X and task Y where the latter is an externaltask that performs a deployment and the former is likely to be a cgitask which prompts the user for when they wish the deployment to occur.

If this assumption is correct - then you will need the code in the cgitask to create a task object for the dummytask (TeamSite::WFworkflow->GetTaskByName() - see perldoc for more info) and then use that task object to access and modify the timeout of the dummytask according to the date / time specified by the user in the cgitask. This gets a bit complex because you have to make sure to convert the date / time information as entered by the user into the date / time format expected by TeamSite::WFtask->SetTimeout (again, see perldoc for more info)

If any of my assumptions were wrong - you'll have to do a better job of explaining what you are trying to do.

marksmith33

Hi, thanks for the quick reply. When i am in the process of submitting a doc thru a workflow, in the 'Release Schedule' section of the last workflow screen, the user has the option of picking one of three radio button defined times, as well as amending the date if needs be. What i want to do is to allow the user to amend that time after they have submitted the workflow and before the workflow is actually kicked off (ie before the original time has been reached).

I hope i have explained things better.

Adam Stoller

Hi, thanks for the quick reply. When i am in the process of submitting a doc thru a workflow, in the 'Release Schedule' section of the last workflow screen, the user has the option of picking one of three radio button defined times, as well as amending the date if needs be. What i want to do is to allow the user to amend that time after they have submitted the workflow and before the workflow is actually kicked off (ie before the original time has been reached).

I hope i have explained things better.

Not really ...

What is 'the "Release Schedule" section'?
Are you talking about part of the workflow instantiation form?

If so - then what I said before about cgitask->dummytask->externaltask (deploy) still goes - at least if you want a UI within the workflow proper.

You could also create a CGI script as a custom menu item that looked through all the active jobs, selected the relevant ones (those for which this option should apply, and presumably which were instantiated by the current user) - and essentially do the same thing - which is retrieve the timeout value for whatever task precedes the deployment process, displays the information in user-friendly format, allows them to change it, and then modifies the information in workflow-friendly format.