Action buttons do not appear

Hi,

I am experiencing a strange issue with a process, the process is available to users who are in a role (static, defined in Metastorm Administration). When the users create a new folder using the blank form and submit that form, the folder re-opens, but the action buttons at the bottom are not showing, the viewing buttons/tabs at the top are visible.

After the first action (the starting form of the process), the stage is a user stage with the role (which limits the blank form access) has To Do access, all other forms in the process are limited to the To Do list.

After the initial form has been submitted the folder does not appear in the users To Do list. I have modified the Workflow to make a form (after the start form) have everyone specified in the To Do list, in my testing this form was able to show as an action button.

The workflow was edited last week, however I do not believe that the issue was being experienced last week.

Is there any way of tracking down why the To Do list is not being correctly generated and the users are unable to undertake any actions.

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Comments

Sze Chun Tan

It happened to me when I set reopen folder at action. Normally I will refresh the folder and the actions will appear. I guess it's just too quick that the eAlert table is yet to setup properly.

Finlaysons IT

Yeah that has happened to me too, and when it has happened pressing F5 will show the buttons, however I have hit F5 a lot of times and the buttons do not show.

Also, whenever this has happened it has usually only been a single-occurence and not the 6 occurences in a row like it has been today.

Matt

Thomas_Prinsloo

Nothing in eAlertGeneratorLock table?

Your's might be a completely different issue, but when I had the problem with items not appearing on the ToDo list, it was alerts getting stuck in the the eAlertGeneratorLock table...

Carolyn Anderson

I think I remember having something similar when I first implemented v9. It was an issue with the login being case-sensitive, either the erole or or the eAssignment table. When I had an action set to todo list, the option didn't appear, but when I had it set to originator, it did appear.

Check all the users and assignments' case sensitivity as a first step.

Finlaysons IT

Yeah I stumbled across the eAlertGeneratorLock table yesterday and then as is now it is empty.

There have been no modifications to any of these users, this issue was first reported yesterday and was not an issue last week.

The only events which have occured is a new user (not within the affected role) was created, the server (both application and SQL Server) was shutdown for a planned outage on the weekend. There have been no recent Windows Updates applied, and yesterday, after this issue was identified, I had applied SR2 and SR3 hoping that this may have resolved the issue (and plus didnt like being that far behind in updates to the application).

Now, I have made two further changes, I have added the Originator to the first stage and have also removed the new user I created, neither of these resulted in the Action buttons being visible to the originator.

I have opened a service request with Metastorm to see if they can provide any input.

Thanks,

Matt

Thomas_Prinsloo

Have you tried unchecking the re-open folder option, and unchecking the action available to ToDo List option (only leave originator)? Just to test if it mught be the ToDo list generation that hasn't caught up yet...

Are you using SSO or just forms authenication?

Finlaysons IT

We are using Forms based auth.

I have removed the re-open forms tick, and the issue still occurs.

I have just found while working on a completely different process, that this issue is also occuring for another process. We dont have many processes (only the one production at the moment), and this one is still in development and I know that last Wednesday that this issue was not occuring.

Is there a way to refresh the alerts table or something?

Thomas_Prinsloo

Maybe you can look in the DB if anything is inserted to the eAlertRequest and eAlert tables. You shouldn't really be able to even see the record in the eAlertRequest table, as the engine should pick it up immediately.
PS Is this v9 or 7.6?

Steve Sumner

Hi Trevor

Do you have a test map which demonstrates your problem and I will take a look, I have setup up one myself but not 100% sure i have set it up exactly like yours.

Thomas_Prinsloo

Trevor - just checking, are you using the ToDo list role in conjunction with a chained action? If so, this probably won't work because of the asynchronous alert generation..

achopra

Have you tried re-running the eWorkProcedures.sql script and restarting the Engine service? I have had to do that once in a while with older versions of the product when I see issues such as this.

Finlaysons IT

@sumnertime - I will have a go at creating a test process and if it is replicable then I will upload it, I cannot upload the current processes.

@Thomas - I am not using chained actions, it is only set to re-open form. the eAlertRequest table is empty, there dont appear to be any entries for the folders in the eAlert table. This is for v9

@Ari - Yes I have re-ran the eWorkProcedures script, when I upgraded to SR2 and SR3 on Monday, and as a just to be sure I have re-ran it again.

I havent heard anything from Metastorm support as yet (well excluding Ari's contribution to this topic), and will update more information as I come across it.

Thanks,

Matt

achopra

Do you have single-sign-on configured? I have seen an issue in the past (and it still may very well be an issue) where when using SSO, there was a case-sensitivity issue with usernames and dynamic roles. I was seeing that the Folders were showing up on the correct To Do lists, but the action buttons weren't rendering properly. Not sure if this is the same as what you are seeing, but it turned out to be due to the fact that the usernames were capitalized in the eUser table but the SSO script was logging the users in with all lowercase.

I believe this issue has been discussed a few times in other threads on this forum.

Jerome_Pearce

It is a weel-known i9ssue going back many versions. If the actions are based on the To Do list, they may not be shown correctly as the folder will reopen before the alert list is re-evaluated.Use another role such as Originator, or whatever the To Do list is set to.

Finlaysons IT

We are not using SSO, it is purely forms based authentication. In any event, both the eUser table and AD our user initials are lower case.

I have changed some of the actions and stages to be Originator or the static role and the actions buttons do appear, however the folder isn't added to the users (or any other user assigned to the role) to do list.

Creating a new workflow with two forms and three actions replicates the issue, so I do not believe it has anything to do with a process, I believe it is something with the engine.

Jerome_Pearce

can you post an example?

Finlaysons IT

Please find attached the simple sample process I have created.

Upon clicking the starting form and submitting, the form closes (as it is meant to do) and the folder will not appear in my To Do list.

If the resolution to the actions button is to assign actions to a role other then the To Do list, then I can work around that (although it would be good to know if there is a resolution, or if there has been a bug reported)

Matt

Jerome_Pearce

Works fine for me. The new Folder is on my To Do list after the first action. Am I missing something?

achopra

sounds like something must be corrupted in your Trevor's environment, because this should work just fine. I hate to suggest this, but perhaps a complete re-install of BPM would fix whatever it may be?