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Changing a list item name re-triggers workflow on old items

  • December 29, 2019
  • 3 replies
  • 15 views

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I'm new to Nintex and inherited a site built by someone else to submit vacation requests. 

 

Background: We have 2 lists 1 feeds some info into the other. 1 list has all the departments in my company and their management. The other list contains the form the person fills out to request vacation. Theres a drop down to select their department so the workflow routs the request to the right manager. After all aprovals are obtained the item is closed and cant be modified anymore

 

The issue:  Due to a management change they renamed the "buidling services dept" to "Maintenace team" and have new Directors. When I go into the  department list and change the  directors name then changed the item name to "Maintenance team" i got all these weird  workflow (failed) notifcations for the old items already closed out.

 

Question: Why did this occur ?

In order to avoid this in the future do I need to first disable the workflows , then change the names , then re-enable to workflow. If thats the case is there anything special I need to do to when re-enabling the workflow to ensure it doesnt re-trigger on old items

 

thank you

3 replies

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  • Scholar
  • December 30, 2019

@milkdud1 .....can you check when the workflow is triggering? Usually there are following 3 ways, one can start the workflow:

 

  1. Manually
  2. When item is created
  3. When item is modified

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  • Author
  • December 31, 2019

Thank you so much. Yes you were right. Can I avoid this problem but disabling "start workflow when item is modified" then make the rename change then re-nable "start workflow when item is modified" or once its put back even after the change it will still re-start 


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  • Scholar
  • December 31, 2019

@milkdud1 .....Since I'm not sure about what's exactly is your business process, I can't comment that. But, if your need is not to trigger the workflow when an item gets modified then yes, you need to stop triggering the workflow when an item is modified and publish the workflow. After doing this (and only after publishing the workflow) any item which gets modified in that list, won't start the workflow. If the workflows are currently running on an item, it won't affect them since they will be running the previous instance of the workflow.