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Special characters in workflow job description

Amit

Hi All,
Please advise as how to allow special characters (e.g. &) to be inputted within new job description field displayed when starting the new job workflow.

Thanks in advance
AA

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Comments

akshathp

I understand you are trying to enter special characters in the textarea box for Description in Worklfow template at the time of instantiation. Correct me if I understood it wrong.

If this is the case then what is stopping you from entering special characters. Textarea will accept special characters and would have them in the decription text you enter.

Which TeamSite version and platform are you working on?

Hope this helps!

Akshat Pramod Sharma
Interwoven Inc.

Amit

Thanks for your reply.
Yes, you got it right I am trying to enter special characters in the text area box( job description) , any string like "R & D" causes error, if special character are used in any subsequent text fields (for user variables) cause same error at their respective line number.

I am using Team site 5.5.2 on Windows 2K, I am also using template based emails in workflows ( if that makes any difference)

Thanks Again,
AA

Migrateduser

I believe I've had trouble with users using a certain symbol (perhaps double quotes, a dollar sign or ampersand?) in workflow textboxes because of the way they are interpreted inline in the wft. I'm not remembering any specific occurrence of this, but I know it has happened, although I wish I could remember specifically which input field the problem was found in. It's a perl issue, I believe - where the symbol in the entered data conflicted with some perl statement using the data. I cannot duplicate this in 5.5.2 - I tried it with all 3 types of symbols with no failure.

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

Edited by Smitty77 on 11/20/02 12:07 PM (server time).

Migrateduser

When exactly are you seeing this error? Is it reported as soon as you press the "Submit" button on the job instantiation page, or does it occur later during the execution of the workflow.

There can be problems using these characters in template based emails (in the header or HTML part) if the string is not escaped.

Please provide the specific context, including the workflow and templates involved.

Thank you.

Brinko Kobrin
Interwoven Staff Engineer

Amit

The error is reported as soon as I press submit, I get an error in a pop up window, displaying something like "error at line number 7"

Yes, I do use template based emails, I am using the presentation templates used in sample worklow "Author assignment with email"

please advise

Thanks
AA

Migrateduser

I am confused. Are you using the default/author_submit_with_email.wft? That workflow does not use template-based email, unless it has been extensively modified at your site.

I tried starting a job with that workflow with an ampersand included in the Job Description field (the only text input that is present) and I had no problem.

Brinko Kobrin
Interwoven Staff Engineer

Amit

Sorry, to get it messed up. Here we go again :
I am using my own workflow with template based emails, templates used are default ones i.e.
author_iwmailheader.tpl
author_iwmailbody.tpl
reviewer_iwmailheader.tpl
reviewer_iwmailbody.tpl

The workflow works perfectly ok if no special characters are used.

Thanks
AA

Adam Stoller

I suggest you post (as an attachment) your wft so that others can take a peak and see if they can figure out why you might be seeing the behavior you are.

Other than that, open a case with Interwoven Support and work with them (in largely the same manner)

--fish
(Interwoven Senior Technical Consultant)

Amit

Please find attached the wft file.

Migrateduser

I am guessing that you are seeing the problem with you "Title" field. When you construct you job spec, you have:

my $Title=__VALUE__('Title');

and then you __INSERT__($Title); into your XML.

This will place the literal value from the Title field into your XML. You need to escape the special characters (unless you want to let your users enter XML markup.) The easiest way to do this is use:

my $Title=__VALUE__('Title', 'html");
or
my $Title= "__TAG__('Title');";

Brinko Kobrin
Interwoven Staff Engineer

Amit

Many thanks Brinko,
Problem solved ... it works perfect with your solution.

Thanks Again,
AA