Inconsistent Data-Mapping UI
Posted by Dean
I’ve been monumentally dissappointed with Teamworks Authoring environment for a long long time but this one really takes the cake.
You can embed items inside BPDs and services. When you embed something there is a tab that allows you to map data from the higher level item to the lower level item.
For Services, there is a check box for every parameter that allows you to "Use Default". This is good and natural behavior.
But for BPDs, there is no visual indication that there are any defaults or not. To use the default value, you must first know it exists, then leave the data mapping blank.
Why is this so incredibly WRONG?
1) Because we have 2 different Data-Mapping interfaces that behave differently.
2) You can’t tell if a mapping will generate an error or not without openning the embedded item.
3) If an item is set up to use defaults and the default is later moved, there is no indication from the outside that it will crash.
Lombardi Tech support finally explained this to me. I pity anyone trying to develop a process that doesn’t understand how this works.
Dean, you raise some fair points here, and I can see how the data mapping differences may be confusing. We strive for consistency across the product with each feature (like data mapping), but we sometimes miss the mark. Features like data mapping are in the product to make process modeling in Teamworks easier than other development technologies and easier than other BPM products, so we agree that it is important for us to get the details right. Removing a default value should not break a service unless you’ve written script that assumes a variable is initialized – if it does, please log that as a bug with support and we will try to get it addressed in an upcoming service pack.
Along the lines of better visibility for model errors in general, we are providing a view for authors in our next major release that lists items with validation problems so authors won’t have to open items to see that problems exist.