Field is Missing - Error only appears if clicked into tool and on Gallery

Question

Hi there,

My coworker is getting the error "The field "Item" is missing. Compare the tool configuration with the input stream" for several Filter and Cross Tab tools. I followed this error back to see that this is stemming from a Formula tool then a Dynamic Rename tool. He has a formula tool setting up field names for the Dynamic Rename tool to use as the new field names for the data set. When he runs this in Designer, the workflow runs without error. It's only until he either clicks around the workflow that the errors pop up (and they go away if he runs the flow again) and the verification when saving to Gallery shows the error, and when he does a test run in Gallery it shows the errors.

So I did some digging and found that this error most often happens when there is a data type change between tools. So starting with the formula tool where we set up the field names, I took a look at the formula, dynamic rename, filter, transpose, and cross tab tools as those are all downstream. The data type changes like this: String > V_String > V_String > String > V_String. So the formula has the data type as a String, then the Dynamic Rename changes it to V_String, the Transpose changes it back to String, then the Cross Tab changes back to V_String. However, these are still essentially the same data type, right? Since they're both String types?

But when I gave it a test run in Designer, I didn't receive the error at all until I really started clicking around a lot  or brought a new tool on the canvas to get it to pop up. But even then, the workflow still ran without error for me. Then I saved it to Gallery. The verification and test run both worked without errors.

So I would imagine if the error my coworker was receiving was actually due to the data types as described above, then I would expect to receive the same errors since we're both on the same versions of Designer and we're loading into the same environment of Gallery. So could this be a memory or cache issue instead? It's the only thing I can think of that would cause one person an error and not the other. If it is that error, would anyone know how to fix it? If it isn't that error, would anyone have any other ideas?

Thank you!

apathetichell · Answer

I'd recommend using a Union tool to add a 0 record text input tool with the required field names. This would propagate the needed schema downstream. There's a lot of reasons why you could be getting this error - and it's hard to diagnose without the full workflow and data - so this might be the easiest band aid for community to give you.

dmpope · Answer

@binu_acs It would error because the Block Until Done tool is relatively unreliable (that I've found) when trying to export to multiple sheets in the same workbook.

binu_acs · Answer

@dmpope Block Until Done tool should not get an error in AMP off mode, you should check your workflow in that case