Altered behaviour on Add Connection node when target (Line Manager) not found?

[Berto2002]

We have workflows throughout our implementation that have nodes to look-up the Line Manager of the Customer and add them as a Line Manager Connection.

These used to always work, even if their was no Line Manager defined; they used to create a 'ghost' entry with a grey circle. That caused it's own issues down the line but the Add Node never failed in itself.

However, as of this morning, it seems these nodes are now failing when there is no Line Manager defined and this is causing a number of broken workflows to be fixed; exposing an issue with our underlying data.

I cannot see any reference to any updates in this area in the Service Manager release notes:

But has anyone else noticed this?

 

[Berto2002]

This is what we used to see on a Request when there was no Line Manager to add:

[James Ainsworth]

Hi Berto2002

Thanks for your post.  What you are most likely experiencing is a result of this line in the release notes.  

As part of the performance improvements we have been making some of the backend code run much more efficiently. The adding of a Ghost entry, as you describe, is something that never should have happened .  The performance improvements would have also have the potential to remove unreported or unknown issues simply through the process of improving code.  Unfortunately this is most likely what you are experiencing where you stumbled across a defect which your process became dependent on.    

On the nodes that are used to look up the line manager, you will need to check the outcomes to make sure that a line manager was found and then provide a branch to bypass the adding of the manager as a connection if there is no manager.  Let me know if you need any further instruction on how to do this.

 

[Berto2002]

Thanks James. We have a bunch (maybe 10) of workflows that have the Add Connection node so I didn't want to rush-in changes yesterday for all of these and risk breaking something. We went for updating Active Directory (which sync's-in) so everyone who had no Line Manager now has "NoManagerDefined@ourdomain.gov.uk" as their Line Manager and this has stopped the issue for now. We've already turned-off the tap on this issue when we create new accounts so we're ok for a while. I understand you need to fix-up the code like this.