Actually, I think that your null pointer exception is for the object “Document”. What you should do is, just after the Fetch Selected Documents, to run an Execution Flow > Run Document Chain. The reason is that the “Document” object is not available when the input is “Documents”.

You can see a sample of this at the page 99 on the following slides

A stacktrace would help to make sure of what is null.

How is you Automation chain called from the UI? A button? An action? Something else? This is not clear to me from your description as you did several different tests.

Normally chains that are called through action buttons or links produce an action link of #{operationActionBean.doOperation('yourchain')} and this propagates the Seam context automatically. Are you doing the call differently?

If you call a Seam-related operation from an Automation chain that's not called through Seam, you have to propagate the proper Seam context from the UI level by passing the conversationId.

To do that you have two choices:

• either run your chain through another chain that uses Seam.RunOperation,
• either start and end your chain with Seam.InitContext and Seam.DestroyContext

It appears this class(GetSelectedDocuments) is getting a Null value from the DocumentsListManager, yet the ClipBoardActionsBean (called by “Add to worklist” button) seems to be working (non null) with a similar call to DocumentsListManager.

ClipBoardActionsBean fails more gracefully if a null is found.

The GetSelectedDocuments call looks like “almost” the same call except for the OperationsHelper wrapper.

I guess that's where I'll go next……. on to OperationsHelper.

Finally got around to trying this. Here are my results so far……

I have a user action which fires the automation chain that seems to work.

When I tried number 3 above I got an error complaining about Null document.

The context of the document does not seem to be available to the automation chain after the I use the Fetch->UI Selected Documents.

I simplified the troubleshooting by trying to just output some of the email fields in a message block to verify the context using User Interface-> Add Info Message with fields like dc:title and mail:sender by using expr:@{Document[“mail:sender”]} as the message content. I've also tried #{Document['mail:sender”]} with the same result: I get a blank for the message. If I put a prefix on the output only the prefix prints.

Any suggestions?

Hi,

Here is a suggestion of how you could do:

1. Create a MailResponse Document type (or not, you could simply use in the step after, the MailMessage)

2. Add a User Action on the Document Summary Actions filtering on MailMessage document type.

3. In the automation chain bound to the user action,use multiple time “set context variable” to put in the context of the chain the value of the fields that stores the sender and the body of the email you want to reply to,

4. In the same automation chain,get the parent MailFolder, then use Document > Create to create a document of type MailResponse (orMailMessage). For the properties, use the context variable you computed previously, so that you update the title (with a “Re” prefix string), the recipients and the begining of the body. You can use the Service > Create Relation to create a relation between them at the same time.

5. In the same automation chain, use UI > Navigate to Document to go to the document type

6. In the same automatin chain, use UI > Change tab to switch to edit tab. (That's why I think you'd better have your own mail response document type)

7. Add a user action displayed in the Document edition form category that save and send the email (using the Notification > Send Email operation)

That's is just the idea. I can give a complete solution tomorrow if necessary.