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Alteryx Designer Desktop Discussions

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Bug: When using Text Input after Block Until Done, execution order fails

Marco
8 - Asteroid

Hello,

 

I haven't found a proper bug reporting part of the forums, so I'm posting this here. This is a rather obscure, but annoying bug I've encountered. My use case is the following:

 

As a part of a larger process, I need to check if a new Excel-file has arrived (this file arrives irregularly, larger process runs regularly) and if so process it and compress it to an archive. 

 

The Failing workflow:

 FailingWorkflow.PNG

If a new file has been processed a bat-file is written after the 1-output of the Block Until Done (#2 of the union contains a command for this). If no new file has been found, a valid .bat has to be created that does nothing, so the workflow does not generate errors. The Text Input contains a command that does nothing, and it gets inserted into the .bat-file if no records are found. The written .bat-file is executed using a Run Command-tool from 2-output of the block until done. The bug and problem is, the Run Command gets executed first in this workflow. 

 

The working workflow

workingWorkflow.PNG

In the working workflow I moved the part that generates a valid .bat file if there's no file read in front of the block until done tool. This causes the block until done order to execute properly. My Idea is that the Text Input-tool causes this, as I've not seen this happen in any other case before. 

 

As I've found a workaround this bug isnt that big of a problem to me anymore. However, finding what was going wrong in the workflow was a pain. 

 

Marco

3 REPLIES 3
JessicaS
Alteryx Alumni (Retired)

Hello,

 

Is it possible to attach them?

Thanks,

 

Jess Silveri
Manager, Technical Account Management | Alteryx
Marco
8 - Asteroid

Not the specific workflow. I reproduced the bug in a new workflow, which is attached. In the workflow you'll find some instructions!

valeried416
5 - Atom

Was this ever validated as a bug or explained? I would understand if it is due to something inherent about the order of operations that cannot be "corrected". I would just love to have an official response on it. In my experience, if I need a text input tool downstream from a block until done tool, I add text input tools to each stream in order for the block until done to execute in the expected order. It's not that much extra work once you know what to do, but I imagine lots of people never figure out that the text input tool is the culprit and how to make the outputs execute in the order they need.

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