Copy Notes between Manual Activities

Inspired by Anders Bengtssons blogpost I have come up with a different approach, similar to what I showed in Service Request with Optional Activites.

Again I exploit the setup where Manual Activities are extended with a number of properties. First create a Service Request template and add two activities. In the Extension tab for the first one enter __copy_note_on_completion__ in UserInput5 (or whatever you called yours).

Now create a runbook that monitors Manual Activities matching this configuration.

The monitor triggers on Manual Activities that are updated to status Completed, and where UserInput5 equals __copy_note_on_completion__. The runbook looks in its whole as below

The runbook invoked by the monitor being triggered looks like this

The first two activities are just as their title indicates.

Get Next MA

The filter value is: MA[Sum(Right({ID from "Get MA"},sum(len({ID from "Get MA"}),-2)),1)]

In short it adds 1 to the Manual Activity ID - for further details consult the Runbook Designer help on the topic Data Manipulation.

You can configure this anyway you like. Point being that we copy the "Notes" property from one activity to the next.

Now we just need to start the monitor, create a Service Request using the template described in the beginning of this tutorial. Complete the first activity and enter something meaningful like "Red herring tastes like salty beef". After a short wait the Orchestrator magic will provide you with an updated description in the following activity

 

NOTE: This assumes that ID's are ascending sequentially. If activity order is changed in the template (using the console) the ID is not changed to follow the new ordering. This is because the sequenceID is changed to reflect the new order, while the XML order is not (the activity IDs are definied by the listed order in XML). The MP will need to be exported, the XML changed to reflect the new ordering and re-imported.

Also sometimes the order in the XML is changed while sequenceID is not, meaning the ID ordering is messed up. Same fix (export, edit, import).