I sat down to write a post about my preference of an automation script for a crossover versus a crossover domain. This also makes me think about the different perceptions of an easy configuration. By easy configuration I mean the most direct, streamlined and doesn’t impact performance but Maximo has ten [plus] ways to do anything in regards to configuration or even creating a work order.
I’ve been on a client site this past week with my team. This is the first time I’ve met some of them face-to-face but it feels like I’ve known all of them for a long time. In all my years working with the Maximo Suite this has to be one my favorite teams. We complement each other quite well, for example my teammate Chad, who I brainstorm with a good amount.
We were discussing some of the configurations and he asked why I did an automation script for a crossover. I told him I thought it was easier because there is no DBConfig involved and it leaves the attribute domain field available in case it is needed for a different kind of domain.
My thought process is to streamline and think ahead for whatever might come but in this situation my crossover auto script and Chad’s auto script, conditionally requiring some fields, clashed. My crossover was populating Chad’s required fields yet I was still getting his error. So we turned his script off and my crossover worked fine.
Well… It worked relatively fine. See in my crossover two of my fields are FAILURECODE and PROBLEMCODE. A Problem Code cannot be entered unless there is a Failure Code entered first and my script would error on the Problem Code so I wasn’t going to crossover it over. I wasn’t happy with this but the Problem Code wasn’t specifically request it just made sense to cross it over.
As I’m writing and gathering some data for examples I realized there is an existing crossover domain, out-of-the-box. I added my crossover fields, including Problem Code and I turned off my auto script and tested.
IT WORKED!
Then I turned on Chad’s auto script and tested.
IT WORKED!
I still needed my script to conditionally populate one field. I removed all of the crossover parts and activated it and tested.
EVERYTHING WORKED!
Even the Problem Code.
Although I love Automation Scripting there are some flaws. I have experienced situations where the data is populated or crossed over or whatever the case may be and I can see it in Maximo but it really isn’t there. It’s like it’s a ghost and when Maximo tries to validate it can’t because it’s not real.
Just to be clear I’m not saying auto scripts can’t be used for a crossover, it’s still my preference. I guess it’s another case of Climbing out of the Maximo Developer’s Rabbit Hole.
