veggiematts
commented
5 years ago After thinking about this, here are my thoughts on this problem:
The reason we have "any" and "Any" for workflows comes from a poorly-designed way to allow to have different behaviors when a workflow is (re)started.
On one hand, we wanted to be able to leave the resource values as they were when a workflow is (re)started. That's the role of the any value (which is null, in fact). Resource Type: Book -> workflow (re)start -> Resource Type: Book
On the other hand, we wanted to be able to force the resource values back to a default setting when a workflow is (re)started. That's the role of the "Any" value (which is really a value). Resource Type: Book -> workflow (re)start -> Resource Type: Any.
If we want to keep this behavior and fix the bugs (#571 and #572) and confusion, I would suggest the following:
- rename Any to Default on existing and new installations.
- Modify the
enterNewWorkflowfunction to have the following behavior:- If the workflow resource type is not null (ie: not any), set the resource type to the workflow resource type. No need to explicitly use "Any" or "Default" or anything else.
- Do the same for resource format and acquisition type.
How does that sound?
poacherone
andyp-uk
xsong9
maahlen
Workflows can be set-up to work with any combination of either Acquisition Type, Resource Format or Resource Type. This is in the edit window marked with a blank option (see screenshot 1 below).
On the workflow setup in Resource Admin it is marked as "any" (screenshot 2).
The code for workflows sometimes uses the literal value "any" (or “Any”) and sometimes interprets it as no value (NULL in the database). This creates several related issues. This issue works as an umbrella issue, giving background and linking to each issue.