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.

​

[HarukoAdegawa]

​I want you to be able to change the column names of the collection in any order. Currently, i'll hover over the column I want to add the field to, press the Add Field button, and it looks like it's in any order on the Field tab, but in the actual collection, it's in the order I typed. The order of the columns on the field tab is different from the order of the columns in the actual collection. I want you to be able to set the order of the columns arbitrarily on the field tab.
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ご担当者様
コレクションの列名を、任意の順番に変更できるようにしてほしいです。
現在だと、フィールドを追加したい列にカーソルをあてて、「フィールドを追加」ボタンを押して、フィールドタブでは任意の順番になっているように見えても、実際のコレクションでは、入力した順になってしまいます。フィールドタブの列の並び順と実際のコレクションの列の並び順が違います。
フィールドタブ内に、複数の計算ステージのような「上へ移動」や「下へ移動」ボタンを追加いただけるか、フィールドタブで列の順番を任意で設定できるようになり、実際のコレクションの列名の順番を変更できるようになると嬉しいです。
よろしくお願いいたします。

[PvD_SE]

Also: When adding a new column to an existing collection, the new column needs to stay where it was defined rather than BP moving it to the last column.

[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?

[HarukoAdegawa]

​Thank you for your comment. I think it is necessary, too.

[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

[DavidMalcolm]

Appending to a collection only adds at the end.  If I want to add a field to a collection in the middle (or after/before a specific field) I have to split the collection in two at that point, append to the left collection and then merge the two back together.  Would be easier if there was a utility that could do this by passing the filed you want to place before, and if blank (or not passed) would add to the beginning.  This is helpful when converting a collection to JSON and needing the fields in a certain order to match (so text replacement can be done if needed on the JSON string as compared to an expected value)