Changing a life cycle state's name

[DonSenchuk]

I inherited a life-cycle sequence that contains 'Under Review'. I'm using this currently as part of a Change Notice workflow. I've also set some policies to restrict/grant access to this life cycle state based on the users' role or group.

I'd like to rename this to something different. I notice in the Edit Life Cycle interface that each life cycle state has a pull down menu for State. I'd like to change this from 'Under Review' to 'Pending Approval' as a more accurate name for the actions taking place on these files while they're at this state. (See attached for example.)

Before making this I'd like to know if this is the road to ruin.

Will this upend all the policies I have dealing with 'Under Review'? I would hope these are tied together sufficiently to allow this sort of change. Policy Admin isn't that hard, but I'd like to know about it rather than have any unpleasant surprises.

Will this screw up our Change Notice's 'Lock Changeables', 'Unlock Changeables' and 'Release Changeables'? I would hope not because all the transtions would remain the same as they were previously.

[DonSenchuk]

I should have double-checked before posting.

When I say Lock/Unlock I meant to put Review/Rework. The Lock/Unlock is the shorthand I named the Execute Expression robots in the workflow.

In Reply to Don Senchuk:

I inherited a life-cycle sequence that contains 'Under Review'. I'm using this currently as part of a Change Notice workflow. I've also set some policies to restrict/grant access to this life cycle state based on the users' role or group.

I'd like to rename this to something different. I notice in the Edit Life Cycle interface that each life cycle state has a pull down menu for State. I'd like to change this from 'Under Review' to 'Pending Approval' as a more accurate name for the actions taking place on these files while they're at this state. (See attached for example.)

Before making this I'd like to know if this is the road to ruin.

Will this upend all the policies I have dealing with 'Under Review'? I would hope these are tied together sufficiently to allow this sort of change. Policy Admin isn't that hard, but I'd like to know about it rather than have any unpleasant surprises.

Will this screw up our Change Notice's 'Lock Changeables', 'Unlock Changeables' and 'Release Changeables'? I would hope not because all the transtions would remain the same as they were previously.

[kiljaedenas]

In Reply to Don Senchuk:

I should have double-checked before posting.

When I say Lock/Unlock I meant to put Review/Rework. The Lock/Unlock is the shorthand I named the Execute Expression robots in the workflow.

In Reply to Don Senchuk:

I inherited a life-cycle sequence that contains 'Under Review'. I'm using this currently as part of a Change Notice workflow. I've also set some policies to restrict/grant access to this life cycle state based on the users' role or group.

I'd like to rename this to something different. I notice in the Edit Life Cycle interface that each life cycle state has a pull down menu for State. I'd like to change this from 'Under Review' to 'Pending Approval' as a more accurate name for the actions taking place on these files while they're at this state. (See attached for example.)

Before making this I'd like to know if this is the road to ruin.

Will this upend all the policies I have dealing with 'Under Review'? I would hope these are tied together sufficiently to allow this sort of change. Policy Admin isn't that hard, but I'd like to know about it rather than have any unpleasant surprises.

Will this screw up our Change Notice's 'Lock Changeables', 'Unlock Changeables' and 'Release Changeables'? I would hope not because all the transtions would remain the same as they were previously.

Be bloody careful with this!!! Access rules in the Policy Administrator can be set on an item linked directly to a specific State that it is in. If you rename the possible State for an item it could screw up any access rules you might have that refer to the original State.

You'll have to go through every single line in your Policy Administrator and check that there is no line related to that specific original State name. A State: All line should be safe.

Daryl Oehr

Engineering Systems Analyst

Westport

Vancouver, BC

Canada

[MikeLockwood]

You do have to be "bloody careful" 🙂 but this is definitely possible. We did it to our primary product data lifecycle once.
You don't really "rename" a state - instead, you swap them in the lifecycle template.

If you do this:

- First search for all objects that use that lifecycle and ensure that none are at the old state, since you may remove the transition for them to ever progress past that state.

- As mentioned below, find all the ACL's that use that state. You may want to create new ACL's for the new state; later once all is working, delete the original ACL's (lots of error prone manual clicks).

- Since the newest iteration of the lifecycle template is effective only for new objects / on revise of existing objects, it becomes a mess unless you pro-actively apply the new LC template iteration to all existing. There is evidently a command line method to do this now from PTC.