Bulk update to add custom form to tasks when some tasks already have the custom form associated.

[JasonLi1]

I have a custom form I need on all tasks within a project (project has 500+ tasks). When I select all tasks and do a bulk edit, the custom form does not show up b/c it is not on all tasks. It is also not in the drop down list of custom forms to add b/c it is already on one or more of the tasks selected for the buik edit. The custom form may be missing from one task or it may be missing from 499 of 500 tasks. The only way I can find to determine where the custom form is missing is to edit each task one at a time and manually verify which is not realistic, especially since the next time someone adds a task without the custom form, I must start all over again. I am not able to find any options to report on custom forms attached to a tasks. Any ideas how I can systematically either: 1) Bulk add a custom form to a group of tasks, even if some of the tasks already have the custom form or 2) determine which tasks use a given custom form from a report/list of tasks or 3) determine which custom forms each task has associated with it from a report/list of tasks Thank you!

[RollinAl]

I ran into this issue myself previously. Fortunately for me the projects I was fixing were not 500+ tasks long so we were able to figure it out pretty quick and removed the Custom Form and then re-added it to all the tasks. The only suggestion I would have is to create a report that filters by a field in the custom form and gives you back the tasks that have the form attached. There is a good post about referencing custom forms in a report on the help site.... https://support.workfront.com/hc/en-us/articles/216688648#Referencing_Information_about_the_Custom_F... Sorry I was not of more help...

[EricLu2]

Hi jason - Workfront, until recently, used to allow you to add a custom form to the tasks that didn’t have it. You could select all tasks to mass edit, and then select a custom form. It was when they allowed multiple forms to be associated with a task that they removed the bulk add process in the manner you describe below (#1). I created a task filter that looks for the lack of an attribute on a task. That gives me all the tasks that do not have the form on which that attribute appears. Then I add the form. Not as easy as it once was, but it gets the job done. I don’t know how to tell what forms are or are not associated with an object, except to test for the presence of the attributes that appear on that form. Hope that helps. Eric

[AdinaPi1]

I had to recently do this. I group by category, and it shows me which tasks have no custom form: [cid:image003.jpg@01D213E3.EF7FA6B0] Adina

[JasonLi1]

Thanks Rollin! This gets me to where I need to be!

[JasonLi1]

Thanks Lucas! This will get me the result I am looking for!

[JasonLi1]

Thank you Adina!

[VernPh]

Thought it may be useful to point out something that I discovered accidentally and may not be widely known: If you display a list of objects with a view that contains custom field attached to a custom form in the view, if you add content to the field, then Workfront automatically adds the necessary custom form if it was not already there. Not sure if that is the way it is designed to work, and it does not solve your specific problem; but perhaps others are not aware of this and may find it useful. I do it all the time instead of editing the task and adding the custom form. Vern Phipps

[BrookeEm]

I have created a report just like this, that has filtered out any tasks that already have that form on attached. However, it still will not let me add that report when I bulk edit. There is a drop down menu of a few other forms available, but the one that I want to add is not an option. Do you have any suggestions or have you experienced this before?

[JasonLi1]

I have done this a few times and have not experienced the issue you are having (not to say there is not a new issue that has popped up!). If the drop down menu is there with other forms available, that leads me to believe that either there is a bug or there are still tasks making it through the filter criteria in your report which already have the form. The way I do this is to add a calculated custom field called TEMP to the form I am trying to add. I set the calculation of the TEMP field to a literal value such as “X”. Then in my filter condition on the report I add where TEMP is not equal to “X”. This way if the field you are using to filter out those tasks that already have the custom form will always have the value “X” vs. having to ensure you have set a value manually in each task or via bulk edit which again would put you in a situation of not knowing you got them all! I have also noticed that the calculated fields don’t always automatically populate/recalculate right away. To get around this I do a bulk edit of all the tasks and check the box that says Recalculate Custom Expressions and save changes. I hope this helps.

[AnthonyIm]

Hi Jason,

We have a similar issue with projects. Every agency has a different custom form they should be using. However, if a PM tries to attach a job number (we have an integration with our SAP instance) before they attach the correct form, a default form appears like Vern mentioned.

I have a clean-up report to fix those mistakes but when you use the Category field you only see the name of the first category.

I created a report that shows the collection of object category attached to that project. However, the way they are setup in Workfront’s backend, I cannot get the name through the collection. It just isn’t a field option for Object Category. What it does do though, is let me know there are two or more forms attached and I can bulk edit those separately to either remove the extra form and then make sure they have the correct one.

The text code I used was the below. Looking at the API explorer, it should work for you even with a task object type report.

displayname=All Custom Forms

listdelimiter=

listmethod=nested(objectCategories).lists

textmode=true

type=iterate

valuefield=ID

valueformat=HTML

[DavidCo3]

Hi Jason, Anthony and Adina are on the money, but I thought I would just summarise the issue/answers with my own tips... Be aware that when looking at the list of tables you can filter/group with, 'Category' means 'Custom Form'. This is not obvious and once you know this, it opens up a few more possibilities. A couple of people have suggested filtering for the presence of fields which are known to be on certain custom forms. In most cases (especially if you only really deal with 1 or 2 custom forms) you can instead filter your reports based on either: Category ID (equals, or 'is null') Category Name (contains) Once you've filtered for tasks which have no custom form attached, you can do your bulk edit. Where it gets tricky is dealing with tasks/objects which often have multiple custom forms attached. In this case, you need to look at Anthony's solution. Regards, David

[AlisonW]

Hi Anthony, Thank you for posting this code, it helped me solve an issue with listing all attached custom forms on a template in a QC view. I am able to get the form name by replacing your valuefield selection of "ID" with "category.name". Thanks again!