How would I prevent a Business Rule from running twice?

Shant Cancik · ‎09-12-2017

I have two Business Rules set up.

One business rule is on the sc_req_item table and copies comments on the RITM record as work Notes on the Task record.

Table: sc_req_item

Runs on: After

Condition: current.comments.changes()

The second business rule is on the sc_task table and copies comments on the Task record to comments on the RITM record.

Table: sc_task

Runs on: After

Condition: current.comments.changes()

This is working fine for the most part. If a user comments on the RITM, the first business rule runs and copies that comment as a work note to the Task record. When a fulfiller eventually types a comment on this Task record, that comment gets sent over to the RITM record as a RITM comment. This is great and the functionality I want.

My problem is that when this second business rule runs and updates the RITM record, my first business rule gets triggered because its condition is waiting for that field to change. This leads to duplicate text on my Task record. I've been trying to fix this but am getting nowhere. Anyone have an idea of what I can do about this?

Brian Dailey1 · ‎09-12-2017

Hi Shant,

You can place a global variable in your business rule to indicate where the update originated (i.e., from which task). This variable will persist only while that particular update is being processed. For example...

For your Business Rule on [sc_task]:

var updateInitiatedBy = updateInitiatedBy || current.sys_id.toString();


(function executeRule(current, previous /*null when async*/) {

       if(updateInitiatedBy == current.sys_id.toString()){

               var gr = new GlideRecord('sc_req_item');

               gr.addQuery('sys_id',current.request_item.sys_id.toString());

               gr.query();

               while(gr.next()){

                       gr.comments = current.comments;

                       gr.update();

               }

       }

})(current, previous);

For your Business Rule on [sc_req_item]:

var updateInitiatedBy = updateInitiatedBy || current.sys_id.toString();


(function executeRule(current, previous /*null when async*/) {

       if(updateInitiatedBy == current.sys_id.toString()){

               var gr = new GlideRecord('sc_task');

               gr.addQuery('request_item',current.sys_id);

               gr.query();

               while(gr.next()){

                       gr.comments = current.comments;

                       gr.update();

               }

       }

})(current, previous);

Only the rule which fires initially and sets the variable 'updateInitiatedBy' will initiate a GlideRecord and update the other RITM or TASK record associated with its 'current' record. Also, it is important to make these run as 'Before' business rules (I believe) because you are dealing with Journal Entry fields which will no longer contain a value after the update has been committed to the database.

Give that a try and let me know if you have any questions.

Thanks,

-Brian

Edit: I changed the global variable's name to 'updateInitiatedBy' for the sake of code clarity.

View solution in original post

Foster Hardie · ‎02-01-2019

Thank you Brian Dailey. That works perfectly. In our case, it was for the task parent-child relationship.

For anyone else's edification, the scope outside of the function is retained for the duration of the save operation.