How to get a rule to fail on blank responsibilities?

[Richard Marut]

Mike,

Sounds like you've run into a case of 'I don't want to have to do that' with
your users. This similar situation just happened to me recently and the
users decided to scrap the workflow and have a message generated that told
them they were missing data.

Good luck!

Richard...


-----Original Message-----
From: sap-wug-bounces at mit.edu [mailto:sap-wug-bounces at mit.edu] On Behalf Of
Michael Pokraka
Sent: Friday, January 28, 2005 8:09 AM
To: SAP Workflow Users' Group
Subject: RE: How to get a rule to fail on blank responsibilities?

Hi Richard, 
I feel like I'm deliberately trying to be difficult here, but I promise I'm
not
:-)

The rule is used in an application -  a QM notification uses rules to
determine
the various agents when it is created. So workflow doesn't feature at this
point. 

As to filling in values... I suggested it, but they don't want to have to do
that for umpteen responsibilities and remember not to leave blanks for ever
more. I also kinda find it difficult to argue the requirement of 'if it
isn't
explicitly specified by a responsibility, leave it blank'.
Oh, and there are a heck of a lot of elements to fill in ranges for - we've
already created our own 'slimmed down' copy of the SAP standard rule because
it
has well over 200 container elements! (rules 03100024/6/7).

For now I've done the terrible deed and checked for blanks in a FM-based
rule
which calls RH_GET_ACTORS for the responsibility rule. But still I remain
curious if there's a neater way for something seemingly obvious.

Thanks for your feedback!
Cheers
Mike

--- Richard Marut <rvmarut at earthlink.net> wrote:

> Mike,
> 
> What I meant to say was, check the data in a preceding condition step. If
> blank, send something (mail or work item) to the workflow initiator or an
> administrator.
> 
> By the way, have you tried not using an *? How about using a range for
Plant
> such as 0001 - 9999 and DocType of 01 - ZZ which would eliminate a blank
as
> being a valid piece of data? I didn't try this when I ran into the same
> issue because the users wanted the work item to go to everyone when the
data
> was blank.
> 
> Richard...
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: sap-wug-bounces at mit.edu [mailto:sap-wug-bounces at mit.edu] On Behalf
Of
> Michael Pokraka
> Sent: Friday, January 28, 2005 4:51 AM
> To: SAP Workflow Users' Group
> Subject: RE: How to get a rule to fail on blank responsibilities?
> 
> Hi Richard, 
> I suppose I should have added that I have little control over the data. To
> make
> life interesting the rule also gets used outside of WF, it's used to
> populate a
> field in a document.
> 
> The biggest issue is that if the abuser doesn't fill in all the info, it
> just
> picks the first agent. Workflow is supposed to go and get someone to fill
in
> an
> agent if it's blank, but so far the rule will always find an agent. 
> 
> I'm just desperately trying to avoid coding a FM-based rule which checks
the
> data and then calls the real rule... it's just way too big a hammer for
> cracking a peanut. 
> 
> Thanks for the input,
> Cheers
> Mike
> 
> --- Richard Marut <rvmarut at earthlink.net> wrote:
> 
> > Mike,
> > 
> > How about checking the data in a previous step before the activity step
> with
> > the responsibility role/rule? You can then take a different path or
action
> > when the data is blank.
> > 
> > Richard...
> > 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: sap-wug-bounces at mit.edu [mailto:sap-wug-bounces at mit.edu] On Behalf
> Of
> > Michael Pokraka
> > Sent: Thursday, January 27, 2005 12:52 PM
> > To: SAP Workflow User Group
> > Subject: How to get a rule to fail on blank responsibilities?
> > 
> > G'day all, 
> > Passing a blank value to a responsibility will always result in a
positive
> > test. Can't get them to fail on blank data. Unless of course I'm having
a
> > daft
> > day (quite possible, it's been a long one!)? 
> > 
> > Now, the tricky bit is that I have many values to test against, but lets
> > keep
> > it simple: 
> > 
> > Resp1  Plant = 1000, DocType = *,  Agent 1
> > Resp2  Plant = *,    DocType = ZZ, Agent 2
> > 
> > If I test this without entering any data, it will return all agents,
even
> > with
> > 'Terminate if no resolution' switched on. It somehow feels like a stupid
> > question... but how to get around that? 
> > 
> > In short I want only those with MATCHING data to return agents. I.e. in
> the
> > example above, it I test it with Plant 9999, it will return Agent 2
(since
> > the
> > doctype is blank). For my purposes, this should also fail (but isn't as
> > important as both blanks above). 
> > 
> > Any obvious answer I might have missed? 
> > Cheers
> > Mike
> > 
> > _______________________________________________
> > SAP-WUG mailing list
> > SAP-WUG at mit.edu
> > http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/sap-wug
> > 
> > 
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> > 
> > 
> 
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