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Get field values during a Create workflow event

  • February 7, 2025
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T
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I’m setting up workflow automation to move Changes status automatically. For example, a Normal Change upon being opened moves to Planning status. However, what I would like to do is a condition that determines if fields are ‘not empty’ and moves to Awaiting Approval, otherwise it updates to Planning status.

This does not appear to work with the Event as Change is Created however and I wonder if it is a limitation because the fields don’t ‘exist’ yet despite the data being entered on the New Change form.

Or maybe I’m just doing it wrong. Does anyone have experience with a similar workflow?

2 replies

T
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  • TyHansen
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  • February 7, 2025

Okay, I was wrong. The issue wasn’t that the fields don’t ‘exist’ yet, at least not all of them. Change tickets are weird because they have a Planning section, and those fields do not show up in a typical condition as an option. They are however available in the expression builder.

So, I made an expression to check the length() > 0 then a condition to get the boolean true/false to perform the actions I referenced above. That is the part that does not work. It works while testing the condition, it does not in the workflow.

T
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  • TyHansen
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  • February 7, 2025

I’m putting this out there in-case anyone else wants to know, but I solved my own problem in maybe an inelegant way. I wondered if the problem is that the length() function does not like null values. I discovered that if I entered placeholder text into the fields I could then use equals() and compare to the placeholder text and it works!

 

Of course that means checking for false instead of true for the resulting actions so you end up with this double-negative situation.

 

Also, the reason I consider this solution inelegant is because unfortunately those default Planning fields are Global, which means the placeholder text is as well. Not terrible, but if ever another workspace wants different placeholder or no placeholder text I’ll need to remove them from the Global, hide the Global within a workspace, create new Planning fields, insert placeholder text, and update all the workflows that use them. Such is life. 

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