Has anyone seen task variables duplicating and "lowercasing" before?

Here's the scenario:

Start a new workflow; the workflow has a task variable named "deployedToQA" which is initially a '0' (zero) and then gets set to '1' later on in the life of the workflow if a deployment to QA is made.

So...brand new workflow, just started. "deployedToQA" is equal to 0. You tab over to the "workflow" tab, find the new job in the list, and click "Actions-->Change Properties". Everything looks good:

For testing purposes, you want to pretend you've already deployed to QA, so you change the "0" to a "1" and click "Save". If you re-open the "Actions-->Change Properties" window, all your task variables are duplicated with lowercase twins. For example, there's now a "deployedtoqa" in addition to the original "deployedToQA".

See this:

Anyone seen this before?

Find more posts tagged with

Comments

moonkhanna

Here's the scenario:

Start a new workflow; the workflow has a task variable named "deployedToQA" which is initially a '0' (zero) and then gets set to '1' later on in the life of the workflow if a deployment to QA is made.

So...brand new workflow, just started. "deployedToQA" is equal to 0. You tab over to the "workflow" tab, find the new job in the list, and click "Actions-->Change Properties". Everything looks good:

For testing purposes, you want to pretend you've already deployed to QA, so you change the "0" to a "1" and click "Save". If you re-open the "Actions-->Change Properties" window, all your task variables are duplicated with lowercase twins. For example, there's now a "deployedtoqa" in addition to the original "deployedToQA".

See this:

Anyone seen this before?

Hi Tom,

Did you have this working before? I have not heard anyone using Change Properties for this purpose. Moreover this seems to be complex for the end user. Wouldnt a CGI task do better in your scenario?

ISCBorisB

Yes, I saw that too. IMO it's not a big deal. In 6.5 "Change Properties" feature is available to the Master role only and its only use I can think of is debugging/troubleshooting

Tbag

Actually, I was the job owner and just a lowly editor when I took the screenshots above.

It isn't a *huge* deal, but it certainly raised my eyebrows. Also, notice that after I changed the "0" to a "1" and saved it, when I went back it was the lowercase version of the variable that was set to "1" . . . so my testing effort was stymied because the script that inspects the variable is still looking at the "deployedToQA" variable and not the new/bogus "deployedtoqa" doppleganger.

ISCBorisB

Actually, I was the job owner and just a lowly editor when I took the screenshots above.

It isn't a *huge* deal, but it certainly raised my eyebrows. Also, notice that after I changed the "0" to a "1" and saved it, when I went back it was the lowercase version of the variable that was set to "1" . . . so my testing effort was stymied because the script that inspects the variable is still looking at the "deployedToQA" variable and not the new/bogus "deployedtoqa" doppleganger.

Ah... Job Owners, too. My mistake, thanks