Workitems being created under different usernames

[Rick Bakker]

Dear WUGgers,

A custom-made workflow was sometimes failing to find an agent for a
Decision step via an AC rule when testing.

Eventually the cause was tracked down and it became 100% reproducible.
It was only when certain users had executed the previous step, and an
attribute had been changed in the underlying object during the
workflow. It turned out to be an authorization problem.

I have always viewed workflow logs with concern when I see which
usernames some of the steps or workitems have been created by. They
could be any old agent, usually the actual agent of the preceding
step. But, this was the first time I had seen it cause a problem.

So what do I do now? Try to find every authorization that could
possibly be needed in every situation with this workflow (and all
other workflows) and request they be given to all possible users, or
do I insert a dummy background step after each dialog step
in order to pass control back to WF-BATCH? I tried the latter. It's
simple, quick, effective and ugly.

Has anybody else encountered this problem?

By the way, I tried putting in a 1-minute wait step after the step
where the underlying  object gets changed, it didn't make any
difference. In any case, there could be other situations  in which
agents don't have sufficient privileges to do whatever a step needs to
be created properly.

We're on ECC 6.0.

regards
Rick Bakker
Hanabi Technology