Creating/Appending task lists

Hi,

I'm trying to use Web Services to add a Task List into livelink from an excel page. I handle the Excel Page and extract the data off of into a DataTable object. I read thorugh all the rows in the data table as follows:

foreach (DataRow row in excelReadout.Rows)
{
    Collaboration.TaskInfo into = new Collaboration.TaskInfo();
    //need help here
    fCollaborativeService.CreateTask(fCollabAtuh, info);
}

The spread sheet has values for the Name, AssignedTo, StartDate, DueDate, Instruction and Comments field. If i cycle through, assigned these properties in the for loop before creating the task, will it work? Namely, will a proper ID value be generated, and if not, how do I get a unique ID to assign the new task? I'm assuming the parentID is the name of the tasklist you want to assign the new task to correct? and the parentID of the tasklist is the folder it's located under? Sorry I'm jsut not entirely clear on the task list structure.

Thanks in advance!

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sgrasley

Hi, Jonathon.

It sounds like you're on the right track. You can also create Milestones and assign the Tasks you're creating to them.

Scott

Jonathon_Riley

how do you actually append to a pre-existing task list though? I tried creatink a GetTaskListRequest object, but I couldn't find a method to pass it too.

Thanks in advance

sgrasley

Hi, Jonathon.

You should be able to use the Collaboration service's GetTaskList() method:

TaskListInfo taskListInfo = fSvc.GetTaskList( fSvcAuth, taskListID );

where fSvc is an instance of CollaborationClient and taskListID is the ID (int) of a TaskList.

Thanks,

Scott

Jonathon_Riley

oops... can't beleive I missed that one. Thanks Scott

Jonathon_Riley

I'm running into a slight problem with the tasklist.

All the data about the task i want to add/modify is stored in an excel spread sheet, but I'm having a problem if I leave the "AssignTo" field of the new task blank. Basically, for every entry in the excel spreadsheet I start a new TaskInfo Item, assigning it the data from the spreadsheet. I verify that the TaskInfo isnt already part of a pre-existing task, then add it onto the tasklist. For Assigned to, i take th username spcified and use it to search the livelink users to make sure that they exist. If the assign to field is empty or contains someone who generates no serach results, i return null and so not assign the task to anyone. If the newly generated task is indeed the same as a pre-existing task, I pull the pre-existing tab, and assign it all the variable that were updated by reading through the spreadsheet then I update the task. The problem is that if I leave ssigned to Blank, and update a task, the task list fails when i try to look at it. The error is

Livelink Error: Error browsing the specified object.

[Error getting milestones information.]

I never touched the milestones so I'm not sure why that would fail. Ive tried doing this when the task im updating is already siggned to someone and when its not assigned to someone. In both cases I get this error. I tried manually assigning the task being updated to user "0" and set milestone to "0" just incase that was affecting it, but that didn't fix the problem. The problem stop if i stop returning null for an empty string search, but then all the tasks get assigned to the first user returned by the search.

Any Idea what I'm doing wrong? I'll C/P my code if you need to see it, it's just rather long.

sgrasley

Hi, Jonathon.

Setting TaskInfo.AssignedTo = 0 and TaskInfo.Milestone = 0 should work. You're saying that you're getting an error in the UI after creating the task?

It might be worth attaching your code to a post (as opposed to copying and pasting into the post itself).

Thanks,

Scott

Jonathon_Riley

Hey Scott. I've made some screenshots and I'll include my relevant section of code. Thanks for the help, I jsut can't figure out why this won't work since I don't even touch the milestones at all. I'll explain the test I ran when I took these screen shots.

First, I took a newly formed task list with no task on it and gave the nodeID to my code. The code cycled through the excel sheet (excel1.jpg) fine, and assigned the properties of the excel sheet to generate the new set of tasks (see new tasklist1.jpg). Everything looks good. But then I make the changes illustrated in excel2.jpg and rerun the program. When I try to access the task list again, I get the error shown in error.jpg

Again the error seems to occur when I attempt to modify the AssignedTo of a pre-existing task

With regards to the code, I apologize for the length/messiness of it but I have to do alot of parsing. The error seems to be occuring in the section right after

foreach (DataRow row in ExcelData.Rows)

I've included the full .cs file and a wordpad document with just the function in question

code.rtf

excel1.jpg

new task list1.jpg

excel2.jpg

error.jpg

LivelinkUtilities.asmx.cs

sgrasley

I took a quick look and didn't notice the problem.

I see in your test that you're both adding an AssignedTo value for one Task and removing it for another. Do you know which of the cases (or is it both?) is causing the problem?

Scott

Jonathon_Riley

Scott,

The error only seems to occur when I remove someone from a pre-existing task. I can generate new tasks with or without them being assigned to anyone, I can change who the task is assigned to without issue but whenever I attempt to assign a task to no one when it's already been assigned to someone, I get that error.

Thanks.

sgrasley

Hi, Jonathon.

This appears to be a bug. I've logged an issue in our defect tracking system for it.

As a workaround, the only suggestion I have is to use a default user instead of setting AssignedTo to 0.

Thanks,

Scott

Jonathon_Riley

Alright thanks.

I'm having another issues with. I wasn't sure if I should ask it here since it seems more a general web services problem then a livelink specific problem, but if anyone can help that'd be great,

Here's the problem - I wrote somce code in C# that takes in an excel file, a parent node and a few other details, then creates a new task list under that parent node, assigning tasks from the excel file. (I'll attach the code). I decided to host this as web service just in case i decide to develop multiple apps to use it. So basically it's a web service that calls the livelink services. If i compile the source locally (in visual studio) and host it on the visual studio generated ASP.NET devlopment server, the web service works perfectly. However when I move the web service on to the main server (runing IIS) it fails with the exception show in Fault Exception.jpg.

I can't figure out how to debug the program server side - I tried using visual studio to remote hook into the server, but with no success. I've narrowed the area where the error occurs (the excel file is properly dumped on the server side, and the task list is created, but nothing ends up getting assigned to it).

I realzie this is outside the scope of what you provide support for, but any ideas on the issue would be great.

Thanks

Fault Exception .jpg

ListEditor.cs

LivelinkUtilities.asmx.cs