How to retrieve attachments from an init task (start form)

h2. Scenario

Note: This article is relevant only if Process Management component is installed as part of the LiveCycle ES installation. 

When setting up a Task Manager Endpoint to start a process, it is configurable to allow the start form or the init task to attach additional documents or notes. Those attachments are then can be seen when the workflow next hit a user step which has been set to copy the attachments from earlier task - the init task. The user step can then choose to extract the attachments into a process variable to be manipulated.

What if you need to process those attachments from the init task before the process hit a user step?
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Currently there is no straight forward way to do that and to find out the task ID of the init task.

This article will help you solve the problem by using a custom component developed by Avoka, called Task Attachment Utilities DSC. 

h3. A Sample Process - Extracting Attachments From an Init Task

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The process workflow diagram shown above has a first step that utilizes an operation on a custom component (Task Attachment Utilities DSC) for retrieving attachments from the init task. The story of the process is basically retrieving all attachments found on the init task, and write them all to the file system. Along the way, add an additional attachment to the init task on the third step of the process.

The operation that does the retrieval of the init task attachments also has the option to delete the attachments from database permanently after the attachment retrieval, thus conserving the disk space used by the database. However, this will mean losing the tracking history later on when referring to past attachment to the related tasks.

h3. Setting Properties for Retrieving Attachment From Init Task Operation

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To configure the properties of the "retrieve attachments from init task" operation step, click on that step, and click on the "Properties" view on your Workbench. It will show a dialog box as shown above. You can select whether to retrieve attachment or note from the init task and whether to delete the attachments or notes after their retrieval.

You also need to specify two process variables to receive the task ID of the init task as well as a List variable to store the attachments or notes itself. For attachment, the list variable should be of List of Documents, and for note, the list variable should be of List of Strings.
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The full reference of this operation alongside other useful utility operations around task attachment on Task Attachment Utilities DSC can be found [here|Public:Task Attachment Utilities DSC].

h2.

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