Activities Missing from Task

Team,

We have seen a weird issue and wanted to report it. It doesn’t seem to matter which version we are using. We have 3.6-3.8 and have the same issue. We have one task that for some reason does not show the activities when opening up in Toad Data Point. BUT, the task still works using the scheduler behind the scenes. Essentially all activities are completely missing, but the XML view of the task shows the information the task is trying to do. Again, this task is still functioning as it should using the scheduler, but when we open it in TDP and try to run it from there, it acts as if there’s no activities to run.

To get around this, just so we can see it again, we had to rebuild the task. I was wondering if ya’ll have ever seen an issue such as this and know a fix for it, just incase we run into it again? I’m wondering if maybe there’s a way to hide activities in a task from view possibly? Anyways, I’m attaching the task we are having issues with if you could take a look.

Thanks a bunch for your time.
RemoveSLFHSD.tas (8.89 KB)

We’ve seen this happen when the .tas file was edited directly, usually a text editor, and Toad no longer recognizes the XML as being valid when later attempting to edit the .tas in Toad, yet it continues to parse it correctly for Automation (go figure).

That’s interesting. I guess its possible the file may have gotten corrupted at some point, even know the user that has this file didn’t even know up to this point that it could be opened and viewed as .xml :). Therefore, he never directly edited anything, but I can see how that result could happen if the .xml was edited outside of TDP. I might have to chalk it up to being corrupted, unless any of the TDP folks may have seen anything else similar or any workarounds to get it back for future issues such as this. Thanks!

I see what has happened here. When you first open the automation designer that is a gear icon that says settings. This is actually an activity that defines how the script will respond to errors, etc. This activity must be at the top. Some times a user pushes an activity above this settings activity and that causes problems. We have looked at trying to prevent users from doing that but have not been able to. Anyway, I fixed the file by moving the SelectToFileActivity section to after the DefaultDescriptionActivity. See attached.
RemoveSLFHSDR.tas (8.89 KB)

Debbie. That is very interesting and I appreciate the help with this. I guess the last question is, could this only be accomplished by modifying the .xml to move this around or are you saying that this can also be done through the automation designer? If so, how do we fix through the automation designer and ensure that we don’t cause issues like this going forward? Thanks again!

Unfortunately I couldn’t see how to fix it in the designer. You will have to fix manually. Hope you don’t have too many files this way.