Would anyone know how to get around the variable limit in Workflow Catalog Tasks?

[abrahams]

We have Requested Item form which contains many variables. I believe there must be a limit to the number of variables in the "Variable on Task Form" section when creating a workflow Catalog Task because I can't select them all. I realize marking a variable as global will show the global in all tasks without specifing it. I don't want them visible to all tasks. There is only one task that need to see them all. Would anyone know of a way around this?

[Allen Andreas]

Hello,

This solution addresses the number of variables available for selection, not the name.

Although, to speak to your question, it's best practice to not have your variable or any table column (field) names too long anyway as there is a chance they can cause issues. I wouldn't exceed more than 40 characters, honestly, if you can help it.

Please mark reply as Helpful, if applicable. Thanks!

[DChandlerKy]

I hear you and I agree on not having long variable names. 

I have one workflow that we are using as a "generic" workflow. It's simple and there are a lot of catalog items that qualify for its use. When I am done with my updates, it will be close to 50 catalog items using one generic workflow, and I'll get to remove about 40 workflows.  As of this morning, there are 20 catalog items associated with the generic workflow. In those 20 catalog items, there's 249 variables. And that's why I asked my questions. Based on this - I should not have run into the issue where I was no longer able to add variables to a catalog task. The setting is "4,000 max length" and I increased it to 5,000 at first and was fine - and then I wasn't and had to increase it again.

Out of curiosity, I just now exported that list of variables into excel, grabbed the variables names and dropped into word. In those 249 variable names, there's 5,353 characters. And that's why I had to increase that limit. The limitation is based on the character count in the names of the variables... not the quantity of the variables you are adding. 

So the answer to the question is that the length of the name on each variable will have an effect on the number of variables you can have associated with a catalog task.

Funny the things we learn! 🙂 

[Allen Andreas]

I hope my reply was Helpful.

In the same, yours was very helpful, and when you take a step back, makes sense...since we're talking about character length for a field 😉

Appreciate your efforts!

-Allen