Modifying a Design
You can only modify your design in the Development environment.
Modifying a published BP or manager design can be a simple matter of changing a field on a form and re-deploying the component, or it can be a delicate balancing act of making modifications that will affect a workflow with trigger elements and conditional steps.
In uDesigner, you cannot edit a design with a status of "complete." You must change a completed component back to "draft" status and edit it; then change the status back to "complete," and redeploy it. Thereafter, any new records created with the edited design will reflect the changes.
Before you modify a published design, familiarize yourself with what you can and cannot change, and the possible ramifications of a change.
Test, Test! Test!
Making changes to a BP can have unexpected results on a business process. Test the BP thoroughly in the Development environment before re-deploying it. Keep in mind that a published BP can set internal requisites and conditions that a re-deployed BP can disrupt. You may encounter error conditions you did not expect.
What You Can Change
Following are the things you can change in a business process or manager design, with some caveats.
- You can change field protocols—"editable," "required," and so on.
- You can add fields (including auto-populated fields on a Payment Application BP, even if the Base Commit BP has been published).
- You can change the fields on a log.
- You can change "Find" fields.
- You can change workflow schemas.
Be aware that schemas are a combination of forms and workflows, so if you change a form, you have effectively changed the schema as well.
- You can change conditional routing triggers.
- You can change the auto-created BPs on a workflow link.
- You can change the Default setting of Line Item Statuses for business processes.
What You Cannot Change
To protect the integrity of your existing records, uDesigner restricts the kinds of changes you can make to a published design. Following are the components you cannot change in a business process or manager design, with some explanations.
- You cannot change the name of a business process or other component once it has been imported into production.
- You cannot change data definitions that have been assigned to data elements that are in use.
If you change a definition, it changes the meaning of the data type and how it is used. For example, if you change a data definition from "currency" to "integer," it can disrupt cost rollups all the way to the company level.
- You cannot change a fund code after it has been used in the system.
- You cannot change a status value, after it is created. You can, however, deactivate it if you no longer want it to be available.
- You cannot change steps and links in a workflow
After a workflow has been published, uDesigner locks the design. The best solution is to design a new workflow. Specifically, you cannot:
- Change step names
- Add or remove steps
- Change link names
- Add or remove links
- You cannot delete fields from a business process after it is active in the system. Deleted fields could disable a formula or cause a cost rollup, auto-population, or conditional routing to fail. Rather than remove the field, a safer idea is to place it in a hidden block, even if it is not going to be used elsewhere in the BP.
- You cannot delete any published workflow, even if it is no longer being used. If you want to modify a workflow, create a new one and re-deploy the BP.
- You cannot edit trigger elements in published workflows. You must create a new workflow. In-flight records will not have any impact if the existing workflow is inactive.
Workflows are so integral to those business processes that use them that a deleted workflow will disable all the BP's configurations, setups, and records.
- You cannot delete a work package after it exists in the system. You can, however, inactivate a work package if it is not linked to any line items that may be in the Cost Sheet. If you inactivate the work package, approved and completed line items linked to the package will not be affected, but you will not be able to link any new line items to the package.
- You cannot change the following options in the BP General tab (navigate to the Company Workspace > Admin mode > uDesigner > click a BP > click Open > click General), once you click Apply or OK.
- ID
- Type
- Level
- Behavior
- Record Instances
You can only edit the Name and Description fields.
Last Published Monday, June 3, 2024