Skip to main content

Conflicts

Conflicts are special objects created by AutoRecords when it is performing processing but encounters situations that prevent normal processing. For example a disposition action may be attempting to delete a file that is checked out. M-Files prevents this type of activity so AutoRecords creates a Conflict. In general Conflicts are any condition that AutoRecords may need a Records Manager to address. By default AutoRecords provides a View where all conflicts can be viewed.

Conflicts fall into two broad categories. Those which are retried and automatically resolve themselves once the Conflict condition no longer exists, and thoes which require the Records Manager to manually address a situation and manually remove the conflict object from the M-File system.

Conflicts Requiring Manual Removal​

The following Conflicts require the Records Manager resolve the issue which created the conflict and then manually remove the Conflict object from the system.

  • Policy Conflict: Created when a file/object is eligible for two different Policies and AutoRecords cannot determine which it should be applied to. For example if a Document Type property is used and Policies are created for each Document Type, but the Document Type is a mutli-select property, a single document may have multiple document types and qualify for multiple policies equally. Once a Policy Conflict has been created, the Records Manager must clear up the problems which are creating the conflict. At that point the Policy Conflict must be manually deleted.
  • Action Conflict: Created when AutoRecords is trying to perform an action but is unable after three tries to complete the Action, for example if the file is locked by another process. Once an Action Conflict has been created, the Records Manager must clear up the problems which are creating the conflict. At that point the Action Conflict must be manually deleted.
  • Metadata Conflict: Created when AutoRecords is trying to update metadata such as Policy, Retention Category, or Event Group and a required metadata property is empty. This usually happens when files exist in M-Files and someone changes the required fields for a class in the Admin Utility. Unlike other Conflicts, Metadata Conflicts do not directly reference the file that has the Conflict. Instead a log file is created that lists these conflicts. This is done because it's very likely that many files will be affected by a single required field being added to a class. Metadata Conflicts that occur when attempting to apply Policies require special attention. The Policy that should have been applied to objects are placed on the Metadata Conflict object, and the Metadata Conflict cannot be deleted. After the Metadata Conflict is resolved (either by populating the missing properties or by removing the mandatory requirement from the property), AutoRecords must be run again. If the second run does not result in any Metadata Conflicts, there will no longer be any Policies on Metadata Conflict. After ensuring that no other Metadata Conflicts occurred during other steps, the Records Manager can then manually delete the Metadata Conflict object.

Conflicts That Automatically Resolve​

  • Indirect Hold Conflict: Created when there is Indirect Retention on a parent object such as a Project, Client, or Employee and that parent object is due for disposition but one of the child documents that should be affected is checked out and cannot be updated. In this case the retention will be carried out on everything except for the checked out object. Once the object is checked in AutoRecords will perform the correct disposition action.
  • Check Out Conflict: Created when AutoRecords is trying to perform action such as setting the retention category, updating records management properties, changing permissions, deleting a file, etc. and the file or object is checked out. A conflict will be created and AutoRecords will automatically retry the action the next time it runs. If the file/object is processed successfully on the next run AutoRecords will remove the conflict.
info

Metadata, Policy and Action Conflicts must be manually deleted by the Records Manager once those conflicts have been addressed.