Collect information about all assignments

Hi Dejan,

We do almost exactly what you are describing at a customer of ours. An event handler on the assignments updates the object/document it is linked to, and adds their name, the date, the action (approve/reject) and the comment to a multi-line text field. In our case, we hide the property on the metadata card, but it is written out in the document itself.

I am curious if someone has an alternative solution.

Vicky

Hi Vicky,

Thanks for response. So I am on the good track.

Which event do you use to get update of an Assignment object? As mentioned, I would need to catch every approval and take date time and comment. I have searched for specific event but could not find it. Or do I need to listen on generic BeforeChange event and check if Object changed was Assignment?

Do you use than history method on assignment object to get last modified date and comment or is there a better way?

If you can share a bit more detail, it would be really great.

Thanks.

Dejan

Hi Dejan,

I wrote my code in a custom Vault Application. You could accomplish the same thing in VBScript I suppose, but it will require more work.

You can use the AfterCheckInChangesFinalize event because you are not modifying the assignment object. You can either filter on the Assignment Object Type, or on the specific class if you have one (see https://developer.m-files.com/Frameworks/Vault-Application-Framework/Attributes/Event-Handlers/#filtering-by-class-or-object-type)

You can tell if the assignment has been approved or rejected by checking if the built-in property RejectedBy or CompletedBy have the current user as a value .

The Comment can be found in the VersionComment.

For the Date you can use the LastModified property.

You can get the Object the assignment is linking to, by calling GetDirectReference(PropertyDefinition). Make sure you can modify the object and use StartRequiredCheckOut, append the new comment to the existing value, save properties and EndRequiredCheckOut.

And you're done!

Good luck,
Vicky

Thanks Vicky. That will work definitely. The only potential problem is if users start writing long comments. As I have multiple approvers, I could easily come to the limit of multi-line property (I think 2000 characters). I miss a multi-select list of texts or multi-line texts, this would help to be sure this kind of cases work. Also I miss the list of assignments linked to the document that I could easily reference in code. It looks like only latest assignment is provided.

I used AfterSetProperty event on Approval Assignment, I check additionally document class so that I don't take Approval Assignment from other classes. Other than that I followed your steps and it works.

Thanks again!

Thanks Vicky. That will work definitely. The only potential problem is if users start writing long comments. As I have multiple approvers, I could easily come to the limit of multi-line property (I think 2000 characters). I miss a multi-select list of texts or multi-line texts, this would help to be sure this kind of cases work. Also I miss the list of assignments linked to the document that I could easily reference in code. It looks like only latest assignment is provided.

I used AfterSetProperty event on Approval Assignment, I check additionally document class so that I don't take Approval Assignment from other classes. Other than that I followed your steps and it works.

Thanks again!

This sounds like a great solution. Do not worry about the limit in multiline text property. It is quite high. I do not recall the exact limit but we are talking thousands of characters, not just hundreds. I have never hit the limit in my 10 years working with M-Files.

As bright-ideas.dk said, the character limit is not a problem, it is at least 10k (see: https://www.m-files.com/user-guide/latest/eng/New_property_definition.html#:~:text=The%20text%20can%20have%20multiple,behavior%20in%20the%20user%20interface)

Fair point bright-ideas.dk and Vicky Dene, actually limit is on 10000 characters. I suppose even if I have 10 approvers (4-5 more realistic) suppose they would not write 1000 characters comments.

Here the docu: www.m-files.com/.../New_property_definition.html

Actually applied the solution for all comments and it works very well. I am using those comments to create new word document on runtime, also works well. M-Files is really flexible product