Work Tasks 2023 R2 release notes

This section provides information about important features, resolved issues, and known issues for AVEVA Work Tasks 2023 R2. The product and the documentation are subject to change without notice.

Important:There are unsigned third-party components that are shipped with AVEVA Work Tasks. It is advised to verify that the File names, SHA1 and SHA256 Hash details matches with those installed on the server. For details, refer Other Components under Acknowledgements section in the online Help.

Expectations and limitations

Review the following information before installing, upgrading, or configuring AVEVA Work Tasks 2023 R2:

• AVEVA Work Tasks 2023 R2 requires a product License version 23.0 or higher.

• The AVEVA Work Tasks license is now acquired from the License Server specified in the Configurator, instead of the Farm Configuration Wizard.

• To prevent crashes in the Common Services Portal, ensure that Microsoft Edge WebView2 is installed on your machine. You can download it from the following link:
  https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/webview2/.

• The Federated Identity Provider - CONNECT is not supported in AVEVA Work Tasks 2023 R2.

• If you are planning to install any application on the same machine that installs an earlier version of the above mentioned prerequisites (for example, PCS 8.0), then make sure to install that application before installing AVEVA Work Tasks 2023 R2.

• Microsoft .NET Core 8.0.10 is a prerequisite for AVEVA Work Tasks and is included in the list of prerequisites. However, the installation will depend on the version existing on the target machine.

• When a user runs the AVEVA Work Tasks installer, cancels, or completes the Microsoft .NET Core 8.0.10 installation, and reruns the installer, Microsoft .NET Core 8.0.10 will still appear in the prerequisites list but will be skipped, enabling the installation to proceed.
  If the AVEVA Work Tasks installation is completed entirely and the installer is run again, none of the prerequisites will be displayed.

• AVEVA Work Tasks needs Microsoft .NET Core 8.0.10 or a newer version to be installed on the machine. Although the Work Tasks installer tries to install it as a prerequisite, if the Microsoft .NET Core 8.0.10 installation encounters any issues, the installation process will continue. However, it will be incumbent upon the customer to manually install Microsoft .NET Core 8.0.10 in such instances.

• While Microsoft .NET Core 8.0.10 is being installed, if an installer screen with Repair, Uninstall, or Close option appears, select Repair option to proceed installation. This will restart the machine after repair and then the installation setup resumes.

• During AVEVA Work Tasks installation, if installation of VS C++ Redistributable2022, Platform Common Service, and Common Licensing API Framework prompt to restart the machine, you can ignore and do a restart after completing installation.

• The WixSharp binary or the environment variable WIXSHARP_WIXDIR are not part of AVEVA Work Tasks 2023 R2 version. To ensure the proper functionality of the packages, users must manually install the Wix Toolset. The recommended version is WiX v3.14.

• Removed all binaries from the Global Assembly Cache (GAC) and placed the binaries in the Central Configuration and Enterprise Console bin directories.
  For custom applications referencing Work Tasks DLLs from the GAC, copy the required binaries to the application's bin directory and update the web.config file (i.e. remove any Work Tasks binary entry in the custom application's web.config file once the specified binaries are placed in the application's bin directory).

• To resolve Galaxy Migration errors after upgrading to SP2023R2SP1 on a machine with AVEVA Work Tasks 2023 R2, follow these steps before migrating any galaxies:

  1. Copy the files Microsoft.Extensions.Logging.Abstractions.dll and PCS.Client.DataStore.dll from:

     C:\Program Files (x86)\ArchestrA\Framework\Bin\AuthenticationProvider

     to:

     C:\Program Files (x86)\ArchestrA\Framework\Bin

  2. Restart the machine.

     While importing OMI App or Client Control, if you encounter the error message: Failed to import Display Library. The type initializer for 'ArchestrA.Diagnostics.Logger' threw an exception,

     repeat the above steps and then proceed with the import.

Deprecated features

SMS activities in workflows

The Short Messaging Service (SMS) functionality allowed users to receive alerts through text messages. Due to limited usage and broader adoption of notifications on app and email in enterprise environments, support for this feature is being discontinued from next release. AVEVA Work Tasks 2023 R2 would be the last release having support for SMS activities.

As an alternative, customers can:

• Use AVEVA Work Tasks Pro, which provides push notifications to mobile devices. These notifications offer a modern and seamless alerting experience, closely mimicking SMS alerts.

• Leverage third-party services that forward inbound emails to SMS messages.

Customers are encouraged to review and update their workflows before upgrading to the upcoming release. For questions, please contact AVEVA Support.

New features and enhancements

Features

• Support for a Redundant Single-Sign-On (RSSO) server in Work Tasks enables seamless user authentication, specifically for Active Directory with Token Service.

• Support for modern JavaScript in Work Tasks Pro app.

• Supports JavaScript based on the ES2021 ECMAScript standard, applicable for Forms.

• The chart control in forms has been upgraded with newer, more modern libraries.

  • The Sankey Chart nodes are now fixed in position, and hovering over a node highlights all related links for easy reference.

  • The Pie Chart legend is now displayed on the left side, unlike the previous version where it was on the right.

  • The Bar and Area Charts no longer show the stacked option.

  • The tooltip's appearance has changed, especially if the first chart control is hidden in the UI (possibly due to its placement in the first tab, which may not be in focus).

• Added guidelines for encoding API parameters to prevent failures from unsupported URL characters. Please refer to Guidelines for encoding API call values.

Enhancements

• Support for FCM v1 APIs for Push Notifications.

• The email template for Task Activity has been improved to facilitate responses through relevant links.

• Implemented validation mechanism to prevent unauthorized access to sensitive information during the creation of Database Lookup query.

• Provision to change the previous simple password "admin" to a strong password for the system administrator.

• AVEVA Work Tasks now automatically re-establishes the RabbitMQ server connection upon recovery, ensuring seamless event handling after connection loss.

• Pre-Workflow Execution script now supports asynchronous execution with Invoke Workflow control in Forms.

• Enhanced Attachment control in Forms for improved security:

  • The All Type option is removed for attachments.

  • .EXE file is not allowed to be attached to forms.

• Added support for the Contains filter in the Autocomplete feature of the Data Lookup control in Forms.

• Improved the Status method in Workflow.WebAPI to handle input string conversions more effectively.

• Provision to set the desired timeout value for the key WebAPITimeoutinSeconds in the Web.config and WFEngine.Net2.Config files based on the required timeout duration for the Web API execution.

• To enhance data security, several improvements have been implemented in the code, which may result in an increased time requirement for data migration.

• Support for 128 characters in App server Object instance names.

Resolved issues

The following are the resolved issues in the AVEVA Work Tasks 2023 R2 release:

• The high CPU utilization caused by the Web Logger.

• An error encountered when attempting to read attachment data from a workflow configured with the Invoke Form activity during the sync process, due to the Input Instance XML value not being set.

• The Scheduler Association fails to run the workflow daily with the Repeat Task option unchecked.

• Unable to associate Scheduler Association from the Web server in the Enterprise Edition environment.

• Unable to obtain the access token to configure SMTP in the Central Configuration.

• Unable to logout from the Active Directory with token service repository when System Management Server (SMS) is configured on different machine.

• Synchronizing the galaxy security with Work Tasks throws an exception if the data file is larger.

Forms

• Unable to store attachments (Excel files) based on the DB storage type from the Repository DB to a physical location and displays a "corrupt file" message when these files are subsequently accessed for further processing.

• Intermittent issue where the form would show a spinning circle.

• The Export button is not visible in the Grid when only one record is present and the Dynamic Page Size property is set to Yes.

• Performance degrades for Chart control configured with multiple parameters.

• Web API does not display decimal values when the first record does not contain a decimal value.

Work Tasks Pro

• Barcode scanning cannot be performed in landscape mode.

• Login to the provider displays a loading icon on the iPad screen.

• Login to the AVEVA Work Tasks Pro App does not function with numeric user name when using a client license.

• The AVEVA Work Tasks Pro application crashes when launching the RFID scanner on Android 13 devices.

• Unable to upload attachments when the Encryption Security Mode is set for the Attachment control.

Connectors and Extensions

• The grid data in Fill Form gets emptied in InTouch OMI, which is configured with Web API using User AccessToken, when the application is open for more than 1 hour.

• Synchronizing the galaxy security with Work Tasks throws an exception if the data file is larger.

• The Workflow reads incorrect or old values from AVEVA System Platform compared to the values in Historian, as seen in related work items.

Known issues

• When a workflow is scheduled to trigger after a specific time duration and the system experiences downtime, the system may create more workflow instances than expected once it resumes.

• Prolonged use of the Web Logger results in CPU utilization spikes. Immediate closure is crucial to restore CPU to normal levels and maintain application stability.

• Entering GET as an instance name is not supported while designing a workflow in Process Designer or while creating Forms and Lists.

• Work Tasks supports OAuth-based authentication for POP3 and SMTP emails. A valid email address must be used for POP3 or SMTP configuration.

• Entering or editing values in Rich Text control is not supported in Mozilla Firefox browser.

• A colon character (:) is not supported for the Activity Name while designing a workflow in Process Designer.

• Role condition set through Filter Condition of To property in the Human Activity is not supported for CONNECT user provider.

• When installing a package, if Folder A already exists in the Forms List of the target environment and the package contains a Forms List with the same folder name (i.e., Folder A), the system logs the following message in the package history:

• Folder title is not unique, or it contains special characters like \\,*/, #&[]; ...

• When Quickflow application is integrated with AVEVA Work Tasks, the enabling and disabling persistence of exceptions and warnings into the database requires a restart of the Quickflow Status Monitor service to apply the changes.

• RFID scan is not supported for Work Tasks Pro Universal Windows Platform (UWP) app.

• Wonderware Skelta BPM 2017 server version is not compatible with the AVEVA Work Tasks Pro application.

• When creating a repository using a Data Source configured with Windows Authentication on Windows Server 2022, the operation may fail with the error Repository [<name>] not defined, severityLevel: Fatal. This issue occurs due to stricter security policies in Windows Server 2022. The problem is not observed on Windows Server 2019. As a workaround, use SQL Authentication when creating the Data Source. The issue will be addressed in a future release.

User documentation

The AVEVA Work Tasks documentation is available on the AVEVA documentation portal.

The AVEVA Work Tasks documentation library consists of the following guides:

• AVEVA™ Work Tasks Administrator Guide: Provides information about installing, configuring, upgrading, and administering AVEVA Work Tasks.

• AVEVA™ Work Tasks Connectors and Extensions User Guide: Provides information about installing and configuring Work Tasks connectors and extensions.

• AVEVA™ Work Tasks Developer Guide: Provides information for developers working with AVEVA Work Tasks.

• AVEVA™ Work Tasks Forms and Lists User Guide: Provides information about working with forms and lists in AVEVA Work Tasks.

• AVEVA™ Work Tasks Quickflow User Guide: Provides information about creating and working with Quickflows.

• AVEVA™ Work Tasks User Guide: Provides information about using AVEVA Work Tasks.

• AVEVA™ Work Tasks API Scenarios Guide: Provides examples and guidance for using Work Tasks APIs in supported scenarios.

• AVEVA™ Work Tasks API Reference Guide: Provides reference information for the Work Tasks APIs.