Ability to change order of the fields in a collection

[LuukOlthof]

I would like to be able to change the order of the fields in a collection just like you can in aa Multi Calc stage.
Currently when you have a collection and you add a field to it it will always be added as the last column. Even is you add a field in between existing fields, when you close and open the collection again the new field is added at the bottom.

With big collections used for reporting it would be a lot easier to have the ability to change the order without having to rebuild the collection

[ChristianPanhan]

​As a collection is just an in-memory-representation of a data table, the order of fields should not matter.

[LuukOlthof]

I disagree.  For certain processes I had to write a collection to pre-defined Excel templates. The Write Collection takes the order of the collection to write to the columns in the Excel file. So because of that in the design and development phase I had to frequently create the collection from scratch because changing the existing one would not yield the right order needed.

Even if the order of the fields is not relevent for writing to excel or whatever you need it for in the process, being able to order them differently once created purely to keep a pleasant and logical overview during the design phase would be helpfull. In the same way you can easily order calculations in a multicalc, I would find to be helpful.

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[PvD_SE]

When adding a new column to an existing collection, you need to be able to define where the new column will be rather than BP moving it to the last column. If you want it to be last, you can move it there. But you cannot define a new column in any other location than the last. Highly annoying in my view.

Yes, you might be able to fix this in XL. But when grouping collection fields that are only used in the process it does not result in a pretty solution as it does however not improve readability for the next developer after me. It is likely that the next developer will develop strong views om my structured programming skills, something I tend to avoid.

And, on a scale from one to ten, how hard can this be to implement?

[johan.m]

A Workaround:
Cut your collection definition in BluePrism
Paste it in a text editor
Change the order of the fields
Copy the XML in the text editor
Paste in BluePrism
​

[LuukOlthof]

@Johan Michiels, thanks for the suggestion. I have used this method as well and it works. But indeed as you mention it is only a workaround. Hopefully this will changed in future releases​

[AmyTsaousi]

Hi Luuk, 

Thank you for your idea. I've updated the status to Under Consideration and you will see updates here as it progresses through the process.

Best Regards,

Amy