Unable to create a view for documents without workflow

Hi,

Just following up on this topic.

I have continued investigating but have not found a solution so far. If anyone has encountered a similar issue or has any suggestions, I would be very interested.

Thanks!

I believe the root cause here is that if no workflow has been assigned, the object doesn't have the Workflow property at all in the database. In M-Files, this behaves like any other property: you can search for properties that exist (even if they have no value), but you cannot search for objects where a property is completely missing. I admit this can be confusing since you can still see the workflow fields on the metadata card.

Because of this, you won't be able to directly filter or search for objects that don't have a workflow defined.

As a workaround, you may need to consider a mass-operation where the property is added (even if left empty). Object Manager consulting tool may help with this process. Note that this creates a new version and updates the last modified info on the documents.

If you need to perform these kinds of checks also in the future, you can consider an event handler that adds an empty Workflow property to the object during creation if no workflow has been defined. That should work at least in theory, but you'll need to test the approach yourself. And naturally you can also enforce a workflow in the class settings.

Hi,

Thank you for the explanation. I understand the mechanism now and why the search cannot find documents where the Workflow property does not exist at all.

For the existing documents, I will discuss the mass-update approach internally. Thank you for the suggestion.

For future documents, I have been testing a different approach and would be interested in your opinion.

I created a Property Calculator rule targeting Document objects with the conditions:

• Workflow is empty or missing
• Object version = 1

When no workflow is defined, the rule sets an empty value for both the Workflow and Workflow State properties.

After a few tests on document classes both with and without a default workflow, this seems to work as expected. Documents without a workflow receive the empty properties and can then be found through views and searches.

I added the "Object version = 1" condition to ensure the rule only runs when the object is initially created and does not affect later updates.

Does this approach make sense from your perspective, or do you see any potential issues or side effects with this configuration?

Thank you.

Sounds like a solid approach. Using the Property Calculator is a great choice to avoid custom scripting/coding.

Thank you very much for your feedback and for your help. I'm glad to hear that this approach makes sense. Have a nice day!

Thank you very much for your feedback and for your help. I'm glad to hear that this approach makes sense. Have a nice day!