Required Extended Properties

[AndrewMcColgan]

Hello,

We have some jobs here where we would like to be able to make sure that users have entered the required extended properties by not letting them continue past a certain point in the workflow.  Is this possible without coding a custom step?  I have checked the 'Required' box on the extended properties configuration tab, but it doesn't seem like that does anything other than put an * in front of it at application run time. 

Thanks,
Andrew McColgan

[BrianDemers]

Andrew,

Unfortunately, I think some sort of custom step is required.  However, I feel like you might be able to use the JTXDesktopTools.LaunchGPTool custom step and a GP tool... maybe a GP model that uses "CalculateValue", or a really brief Python script?

Three things as food for thought, if you aren't already aware:

1. You can set the default value for an extended property for a job type.  If it's acceptable for your workflow, you may find it helpful to have a default value for this property, like "None", "NotSet", "0", etc., as opposed to just an empty string.


2. You can use tokens to pass the value of an extended property as an argument to a step (ex. [JOBEX:TABLENAME.PROPERTY])


3. If you double-click on the connection leaving a step in a workflow, you can restrict the cases in which that path is used.  Ordinarily this is used for decision steps -- 1 is assigned to the "yes" path, 2 to the "no" path, etc. -- but you can also use it to prevent a workflow from advancing past a step unless a "success" value is received.  Have a look at the "Workflow Manager Custom Steps" page in the user's guide for a list of the various steps' return values.

In any case, I definitely agree that such a check would be good to have.  I hope some of this helps...

Brian D.