Action item assignees: how to select manager as an assignee in an idea process?

[Anon Anon]

Hello,

 

we have created an idea based process and would like to create an action item "Review this idea" and select the Manager (PM) as an Assignee... Clicking on the browse button and selecting Resource Fields only Originating Request and Business Owner are showing... looking into the lookup definitions I found that the difference between Business Owner lookup and the Manager one on the Idea Business Owner lookup it is associated to the Resource object and not Browse Resource from Manager lookup...  I have tried to associate the Resource object to the Browse Resource lookup and now the Manager, Target Manager and Resource appear also appear under Resource Fields...

 

however when executing the process I get "BPM-0543: An error occurred when sending the action item"

and in the bg-ca.log:

ERROR 2015-04-16 13:05:26,780 [Action Execution Pipeline 0 (tenant=clarity)] niku.calendar (clarity:process_admin:5284041__2929E327-0E50-4EB2-B797-144C008D53E8:none) No rows found when reading user profile for user: -1

WARN  2015-04-16 13:05:26,780 [Action Execution Pipeline 0 (tenant=clarity)] bpm.services (clarity:process_admin:5284041__2929E327-0E50-4EB2-B797-144C008D53E8:none) Error sending Action Item

java.lang.NullPointerException

  at com.niku.calendar.service.ActionItemMessageService.sendNewAINotifications(ActionItemMessageService.java:224)

 

it seems like my workaround of associating the resource object to the lookup did NOT work.  No rows found reading user profile... No managers found also the field Manager is properly filled in the Clarity UI...

 

anybody would have an alternative to select Manager as an assignee within an action item on an idea based process ?

 

 

many thanks,

 

Olivier

[navzjoshi00]

Can you check if it's an inactive manager ?

 

NJ

[Anon Anon]

yes the manager is active.  furthermore I have tried with 3 different managers... one of them was the originating requestor (the resource who actually created the idea).

 

any other hints?

[Anon Anon]

If I remember correctly, that bit of functionality only allows assignment to resources that the logged-on user can "see" - so to get around that you have to give all resources view access to all other resources somehow. I think I worked around it in the past by changing the code in the lookup used (i.e. a customisation) though.

 

(might be wrong here, have not checked any of this)

[Anon Anon]

Hi David,

 

I have just double-check my Idea Creator and Manager's Global Rights (both within Project Manager Group) and verified that they have Resource View All.  That means both the Idea requestor (creator) and the Manager selected have resources view access to all other resources as you wrote above.  It doesn't seem to help in my case

 

would you happen to have the "customized" lookup code at hand by any chance?

 

thanks!

[Anon Anon]

Ok maybe I'm remembering it wrong - it wasn't the lookup we had to recode, it was logic in a server file somewhere - I've had a quick look in my archive and I can't immediately see what I'm thinking of though sorry.

[Anon Anon]

Ok right found something - nothing to do with resource view rights, it was to do with project participants;

 

My notes say;

 

PROBLEM : When a RISK is raised against a PROJECT, and an ACTION ITEM is associated to that RISK, then the list of ASSIGNESS available for the ACTION ITEM is limited to the PARTICIPANTS on the related project

 

FIX : edit file; \META-INF\calendar\pmd\eventsListPMD.xml

 

change the calendar.project.browseUsers SQL statement to

 

      <text>

         SELECT * FROM (

        SELECT r.user_id,

                      r.first_name,

                      r.last_name,

                      r.unique_name,

                      r.is_external,

                      r.person_type

             FROM srm_resources r,

                        cmn_sec_user_groups ug,

                        clb_project_group_keys k

            WHERE ug.user_id = r.user_id

                AND k.project_members_group_id = ug.group_id

                AND k.project_id = ?

                AND r.is_active = ?

                AND r.resource_type = ?

UNION

        SELECT r.user_id,

                      r.first_name,

                      r.last_name,

                      r.unique_name,

                      r.is_external,

                      r.person_type

             FROM srm_resources r, cmn_sec_users u

             WHERE u.id = r.user_id

               and u.user_status_id = 200

                 ) r

             WHERE 1=1

      </text>

 

 

--

 

BUT OBVIOUSLY This was a very specific fix for my RISK-related Action-Items situation (and was in version 8.1), whether this is the same thing you are encountering I can not tell you - I can not advise changing any server files without you talking to CA Support, but maybe the above will help you understand what is going on (or maybe not!)

[Anon Anon]

doesn't quite help unfortunately the list of assignees remains the same.

 

actually my "workaround" made my case even worst now that I have associated Resource object to Browse Resource I cannot remove the association as it is a enter one attribute... that made the Manager and Target Manager appear in the Assignees list BUT they are now returning srm_resource.id instead of the desired cmn_sec_users.id !! this is why no assignee was returned (action item could not be sent to anyone thus the error message...).

 

now I have 2 problems I am not able to assign managers to an action item  +   I cannot remove the Resource association to the system Browse Resource lookup...

[Jeanne Gaskill]

Hi Olivier,

 

Please open a support case so that one of us can help you and walk you through fixing this problem one step at a time.

 

We will be glad to assist.  But it looks like it may be a bit complicated to handle here in the communities.

 

Sincerely yours,

 

Jeanne Gaskill

Senior Support Engineer - Clarity

CA Technologies, Inc.

[Anon Anon]

ok thank you so much!

 

I will create an issue under Customer's Site ID 926534

[Anon Anon]

case number: 00074950

 

thanks!

[Anon Anon]

no help yet from support is there a procedure to remove the lookup object association? I assume this would be a database update query...

 

thanks

[Roberto Barra]

Hi,

 

That´s something I do not understand on Clarity. Why we can't choose the idea manager from the 'Object Roles' tab??

 

Well, about the 'Browse Resource' lookup from the Manager field. You can't just associate it to the resource object. The main difference between this lookup and the other resource lookups that are associated with the resource object is the id they return.

The 'Browse Resource' lookup from the Manager field returns id from cmn_sec_users, while the 'real' resource lookups returns id from srm_resources.

A solution that do not require to change Clarity source code would be the creation of an auxiliary resource field, working together with a process to copy the manager to this filed at every manager change (you could replace the process with a trigger, if you are allowed to).

Regards,

 

 

[Anon Anon]

Hi Roberto, thanks for your inputs!

 

I have went through this workaround in the past and it got so messy whenever the users would change the Idea Manager within the process then giving and removing Auto Manager rights via sql triggers or GEL script calling sql updates made it impossible to manage

 

Furthermore in the Idea setup we have here we have 4 responsible roles for the Ideas... Originating Requestor, IT Lead (target manager), Business Lead (business owner) and PM...  actually only Originating Requestor and Business Owner are working fine as they appear in the Resource Fields from Assignee List...

 

I am quite stuck unfortunately

[Anon Anon]

Hi Olivier,

 

We cannot delete the association of the Object that you have made with the BROWSE RESOURCE (ID: BROWSE_PROJMGR ) lookup

And also making direct database updates is not supported and could cause issues because changing the associated lookup will be in conflict with any data already saved on this attribute for each instance record.

The best recommendation is to create a new attribute associated with the correct type of lookup.

Then you can query the old attribute or put it next to the new attribute in the UI and update it through the UI or if there are lots of records to update, you can use XOG to read out all the records and manipulate the XOG file to fill in the correct value for the new attribute.

 

And also we cannot assign IDEA Managers to Action items because this is working as Designed.

CA PPM Process Action Item assignees functionality is expecting to use the internal record ID for a Resource record, stored on the SRM_RESOURCES table, not a user record ID.

Where in the Idea Manager attribute is defined using the BROWSE_PROJMGR lookup.

This dynamic query lookup uses the CMN_SEC_USER.ID as the hidden key.

This is why the Idea Manager attribute is not available for selection on the process.

So, I request you to raise an Enhancement so as to see the Idea manager in the Action item Assignees.

Thank You.

Regards,

R Preethi.