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Will change of workflow affect workitems already exists?


Karthik Krishnan (8825117163) | asked Jun 27 '16, 5:44 a.m.
What will happen to the existing workitems if we change the workflow of a workitem type? Do we need to update all or can we leave it as-is?

I want to update the workflow of "Task" workitem type from "Default workflow" to "Task workflow"

In my case both "Default workflow" and "Task workflow" are identical?

Process template: Formal process model

Does this also affects custom scripts?

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Ralph Schoon (63.1k33645) | answered Jun 27 '16, 5:53 a.m.
FORUM ADMINISTRATOR / FORUM MODERATOR / JAZZ DEVELOPER
edited Jun 27 '16, 5:54 a.m.
If you change the workflow, RTC will use the state ID's for the new workflow. For all existing work items based on the old workflow, if there is a state with the same ID in the new workflow, it will show. If there is none, as far as I can tell, the initialize action will be executed and you end up in the new state. The resolution is likely also affected, but I have not played with that.

One way of dealing with this could be an CSV export of the affected work items and their states. Then, create a mapping of the target states and run an import with update.
Karthik Krishnan selected this answer as the correct answer

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Karthik Krishnan commented Jun 27 '16, 7:16 a.m.

The state and actions are identical in both the work flow as one is called "Default workflow" and the other is "Task workflow", which comes as part of the Formal process template provided by RTC.

In this case I will first analyze the internal representation

Thanks Ralph.


Karthik Krishnan commented Jun 27 '16, 7:32 a.m.

Checked and here is how the workflow is represented internally

Default workflow:

<dc:identifier>5</dc:identifier><dc:title>Closed</dc:title>

Task Workflow:

<dc:identifier>task_workflow.state.s1</dc:identifier><dc:title>Closed</dc:title>

Only the name is same where ask the identifier is different.

So In this case I guess all tasks will be "Initialized"


Karthik Krishnan commented Jun 27 '16, 7:56 a.m.

I did change in the test Project area and all "Task" were uninitialized. Guess this activity is more tedious than I thought.

Thanks Ralph


Ralph Schoon commented Jun 27 '16, 8:26 a.m.
FORUM ADMINISTRATOR / FORUM MODERATOR / JAZZ DEVELOPER

The export and some search and replace could provide a lot of help here


Karthik Krishnan commented Jun 27 '16, 9:12 a.m.

Yes that might help but I am talking about ~ 50000 + Task workitems
The work might get tedious. Perhaps we need to think of another solution for the problem we have.
 

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IBM Rational Product User (23316) | answered Jun 27 '16, 6:30 a.m.
 Hello,

If you remove existing states from workflow, it will show you data impacted and you can update all affected work items to another state. If you add new state or action, it will be reflected for all existing workitems as well.

This article explains impact of each change in detail:
https://jazz.net/library/article/1002

- RShah

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Karthik Krishnan commented Jun 27 '16, 7:15 a.m.

The state and actions are identical in both the work flow as one is called "Default workflow" and the other is "Task workflow", which comes as part of the Formal process template provided by RTC

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