New Job vs. Submit

I remember reading somewhere that if you attempt to execute a job and there is only one workflow template available for the current scenario (branch, user, etc.), then the GUI that displays the list of available workflow templates will not display and the one available workflow template will be invoked automatically. This seems to work when you use the Submit button to invoke a job, but not when you use File->New Job to invoke a job. When I have a situation where only one workflow template appears in my list of possible templates to choose from, I would expect this template to just automatically run without me having to select it and click the New Job button. Why does this not work for File->New Job?

Solaris/5.5.2

Dave Smith
Sr. Software Engineer
Nike, Inc.
(503) 671-4238
DavidH.Smith@nike.com

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Migrateduser

I thought this would have been a quick one - either someone telling me I was smoking crack or that it's a bug. So I'll just ask again. Why does the New Job functionality display a single workflow template you need to select rather than just kick it off automatically like the Submit button does?

Dave Smith
Sr. Software Engineer
Nike, Inc.
(503) 671-4238
DavidH.Smith@nike.com

Migrateduser

I don't know the full history, but I think the design rationale is something along the following lines:

1) We would generally expect TeamSite to be configured so that when a user (typically an Author) presses Submit, there is only one applicable workflow. (The submit workflow for that context.) So if there is only one applicable workflow, we do not make the user select it from a list. However, we do not *require* that there be only one possible workflow for submit, so if there should be more than one applicable we have the user select.

2) The "New Job" is intended to be used for *other* processing (other than Assign or Submit). There is no obvious default for "other", so we ask the user to select which other process (of those available in the current context) is desired. Even if there is only one available process, we want the user to explictly confirm that this is the desired process. It may not be what the user had in mind.

Brinko Kobrin
Interwoven Staff Engineer

Migrateduser

This doesn't make sense to me. I can configure the Submit action and the New Job action however I like, based on available_templates.cfg. I can have the same list of workflow templates (more than one) set up for either Submit or New Job and when I invoke either one, I see the list of available templates to choose from in a radio button list. However if I configure both Submit and New Job to only allow one workflow template (assume it's one of my custom ones), and I click on Submit, it automatically kicks off that workflow. If I choose New Job, it gives me a radio button list with just the one workflow template. I'm saying this is wrong - they should be able to work the same. Doesn't the process that handles New Job know that there's only pne possible choice? There's no good reason to display a radio button list that contains one entry. It's a waste of my users' time (my users are very finicky) and obviously the code exists to handle kicking off the workflow automatically if that's what Submit does. As far as the user being able to back out if they didn't mean to go down that path, they can simply click cancel once the workflow UI screen pops up. I would request this be a feature request, if not a bug.

Dave Smith
Sr. Software Engineer
Nike, Inc.
(503) 671-4238
DavidH.Smith@nike.com

Adam Stoller

The rationale that Brinko provided is not that unreasonable in general - just unreasonable to you. However I do agree that it probably *should* behave the same way.
This is already filed as a bug (12414) I've just added Nike, Inc to the list of interested customers.

--fish
(Interwoven, Curriculum Development)

Migrateduser

Thanks. And as long as it's unreasonable to somebody, it's worth enhancing. Not everyone's needs are the same, as you have often pointed out. One way I can think of that would possibly make everyone happy is to provide a flag in iw.cfg in the [workflow] section that you can either turn on this capability or leave it the way it is. That way it's configurable for everyone.

Dave Smith
Sr. Software Engineer
Nike, Inc.
(503) 671-4238
DavidH.Smith@nike.com