Tool Configuration persistence

[alexg1]

This is less of a request for help and more of a question to satisfy my own intellectual curiosity.

I've noticed that on workflows I've used regularly for report production some tools will behave strangely. If I open a workflow, then click on a tool, it will forget all the fields that went into it, or forget which ones were selected. However if I exit the workflow, reopen it, and run it without selecting any tools, it will run perfectly fine without errors. Selecting the tool then will show the fields and how they were configured on the previous run or edit.

This only occurs with some tools. I haven't observed this in things like Select, Join or Union, but it has shown up often with the Unique and Find/Replace Tools, and once in a while with the data cleansing tool.

Again, this isn't a complaint, the fix is simply to reopen the workflow and run it before adjusting any tool configurations. I'm just curious what's going on under the hood that causes this behavior for some tools and not others.

[Qiu]

@alexg1 
Maybe you have check the "Disable Auto Configuration" option?

[ArtApa]

Hi @alexg1 - This behaviour is usually observed, if in your workflow you have transformations that change your metadata based on data. For example, if you have a Cross Tab tool. In this case consecutive tools do not know new column names before you run your workflow.

Now, if you will disable Auto Config as described above, you can manually push metadata by pressing the button in the bottom left corner:

[SanjuRaghu]

I do have same issues with my canvases. 

@Qiu- I tried to play around with this config but it doesn't help. This issue is mostly with unique tool.

Thanks

[ddiesel]

@alexg1 I'm glad you asked the question because I have often wondered the same thing. Sometimes I bring in placeholders with a Text Input and Union right before the UniqueTool to prevent losing the configuration. Curious if anyone else has any information about this. It's less of a problem and more of an annoyance.