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Assignment for Unattended Smart Services

judym598
Certified Senior Developer
An application that has been in our TEST environment for several weeks recently generated an error (InvalidUserException) that was spawned when the process flow came to a 'Send E-Mail' node. I'm pretty certain the cause is due to the assignment on this node. I had it set to 'Run as whoever started the process' and I think it should be 'Run as whoever designed this process model', but I'm not sure why the error is only now showing up. The individual who started the process is not an administrator but has tested this process multiple times. Am I correct in assuming that the assignment for Send E-Mail, News Feed and Subprocess nodes should (always) be set to 'Run as whoever designed this process model' - which would be the application administrator (Administrator group) who updates/imports patches? When would it be set to 'Run as whoever started the process'? It seems as though that is the default. If i...

OriginalPostID-234736


Node Assignment.docx

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  • 0
    I created the following post if you're interested in tracking the discussion:
    forum.appian.com/.../e-234781
  • 0
    Hi Judy,
    you mentioning that you are pretty certain that the cause is due to the assignment on this node.
    IF this is true, you might be considering the following procedure always. The process model has to be run with 'whoever designed the process'. Very important is (!!): deployment of this process model should be done with a system account - yes with administrator rights, but not linked to a person. The rationale for that: if the user who started the process gets deprecated the process will stop. If you deploy with system account, this account will be applied to "whoever designed this process". To get more specific you may have a look at the system log to figure out what kind of invalid user exception happened.
  • 0
    Certified Senior Developer
    The security on the process model is associated with specific groups (not users), but this node was assigned to whoever started the process (i.e. someone who is a basic user). Once I changed the assignment on that node to whoever designed the process, the basic user was able to start and complete the process as designed. The emails were sent out correctly. We do use a system account (an 'application administrator' user) who is assigned to the 'administrator group' when deploying/importing our applications. This group has 'administrator' rights on the process model. We ran into the issue in the past with deprecated users!
  • 0
    Certified Senior Developer
    I figured out why I received an 'InvalidUserException' error at the 'Send Email' node. The privacy setting for one of the groups in the recipient list was set to high. I did some more research and read that if you set the assignment for this node to 'Run as whoever started the process', the initiator has to be able to see the members in the group. Because the privacy setting on one of the groups was 'high', the initiator couldn't see those members and therefore, did not have the authority to send an email. Note that if the setting IS changed to 'Run as whoever designed the process', the recipient group needs to be publicly visible or the designer has to be a member.
  • 0
    Appian Employee
    Thanks for sharing the resolution! We may create a Knowledge Base article based off your discovery to help others who find the same issue.
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