What's the difference between Item Key and GUID in Queue?

[Anonymous]

What's the difference between Item Key and Item ID in Queue? 

and Where Item key is needed or used?

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Sanaa Fallah
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[devneetmohanty07]

Hi Sanaa,

'Item ID' attribute is associated with every work item whichever is added to a work queue and is a unique ID which is used to store it in the Blue Prism backend database and as well as is something that gets returned when we use 'Get Next Item' or 'Get Item Data' action. This ID is what helps us to point out to any specific work queue items in our queue and is what Blue Prism understands as one item being uniquely identified from the other item.

Coming to Item Key, it's an optional field which means you need not set it every time. In the Workflow settings you can either check or uncheck it while creating your queue. It is actually one of the column values in the data that you are going to store as an item which should uniquely be used to identify that item in a list of all items. This we use so that while using 'Is Item In Queue' action, it can tell us if any item with that same column value already exists or not which can help us to not add any duplicate item in the queue. For example, if I have a Orders data where there are 4 columns named, 'Product ID', 'Qty', 'Price' and 'Department'.

Here, if let say we have a requirement such that we can get duplicate products in the input file but in our queue we only need to process unique products then in such a case we can set 'Product ID' column name as the 'Item key' while creating the queue so that whenever we use 'Is Item In Queue' action, the flag that gets returned to us checks is there any item that already is added in the queue with that same column name value or not. Here we choose 'Product ID' as every item is going to have a unique product ID. This is something that you need to decide on the basis of the type of the data that you get and if having unique data from a business standpoint is mandatory.

Also, Item Key is used to easily identify any items from the Control Room in your work queue as we do not get to see which item indicates what data in that view. So while monitoring or generating reports from queue visually it can help us very clearly. Item Key can also be used while filtering items in you 'Get Next Item' action similar to how tags are used.

NOTE: You should not be putting any sensitive value over the 'Item Key' field for any work queue item such as Account Number, Credit Limit etc. and if you are choosing any value it should be in compliance with your business rules.

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Hope it helps you and if it resolves you query please mark it as the best answer so that others having the same problem can track the answer easily

Regards,
Devneet Mohanty
Intelligent Process Automation Consultant | Sr. Consultant - Automation Developer,
Wonderbotz India Pvt. Ltd.
Blue Prism Community MVP | Blue Prism 7x Certified Professional
Website: https://devneet.github.io/
Email: devneetmohanty07@gmail.com

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