Progressing Stale Case References

If you open a work item that has a stale case reference, the fields that contain the stale case references are blank and you are not able to enter any data in the fields.

There are two different ways to progress a work item that contains a stale case reference, depending on whether the work item form contains a single case object or an array of case objects.

If your work item has only one case object and that case reference is stale, then you must select Cancel. At this point, the process instance is in a Started state with the work item opened. In other words, the process instance is effectively halted and cannot be progressed any further. Therefore, you must select Cancel on the work item form and then cancel the process instance.

You can still select Close or Submit but if you do, the following error displays:

Error in server data: the value for the parameter: parametername contains an invalid global object reference

where parametername is the name of the field that contains the stale case reference. Openspace does not allow you to submit or close the work item as this would cause invalid case data.

If your work item contains an array of case objects, and one or more of the case references are stale, then you can submit the work item by selecting Submit. However, the case data for the stale case reference is submitted as Null. If there are other tasks in your process that use the invalid case reference, then this could cause the process instance to halt and it could not be progressed any further. In this situation, the process instance must be cancelled.