avoid running actions which are in the presentation layer at the start of the workflow

[ThomasBajec]

Hi all,

Is there a way to NOT execute actions, which are set on the presentation layer, at the start of a workflow?

On our provisioning workflow contains a step where we select the cluster to build the vm on. Once that has been selected all other required objects will get calculated automatically.

That means in the next drop-down you get now a list available of all hosts which are members of that selected cluster. We do the same with the networking and all the datastores we use for a vm.

All the actions are mainly bound to the “Predefined list of Elements”, “Data Binding” and “Default Value”

The problem is that when I start the workflow I get, for sure, a lot of error messages in the log file because I have not selected a cluster at this stage. Also it takes some time until the presentation layer will be shown.

Is that anything I can do to avoid running all those actions which are bound to the presentation at the start of the work flow? And just let them run when I selected a cluster object?

Thanks a lot!

[cdecanini_ · Accepted solution]

The best practice is that the first line of your action should do a if (cluster == null) return null;

This will speed up the presentation a lot.

Another more complex way is to use an ognl expression in the presentation field but these are hard to maintain and may not give any gain over running the action and returning null.

[ThomasBajec]

HI cdecanini,

wow. that did the trick. many thanks for the really quick response!!

cu

tom