How do you blank out a field using a Lawson Transaction Node?

I have a flow were I'm trying to blank out the cycle fields on PR14.1. If I select the field but don't provide any value then the node processes fine but no changes happen to the cycles. They stay whatever they were set to previously. I tried passing:

BLANK

*BLANK

but all threw AGS errors. What really confused me though is when I typed something wrong. I was editing the call which had:

&EDM-DED-CYCLE1=

I meant to put:

&EDM-DED-CYCLE1=*BLANK

to test that out but I typed it wrong and put:

&EDM-DED-CYCLE1*=BLANK

So i accidentally put the star before the equal sign. This actually processed with no errors....In fact it blanked out cycles 2 and 3 that were populated but left cycle 1 alone. I don't understand why.

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unknown

Hey Rainit,

What is the reason for blanking out the cycles on PR14 for the employee? The process automations that I have built in the past take the values from PR05 and pass them over to PR14. This ensures that every employee with said deduction is setup the same way.

What are the AGS errors that the automation is throwing when trying to put in a blank field? I know with the effective end date field you can leave it blank and it will remove the end date as expected.

One suggestion is try to put in an actual blank space in the Cycle Group. I am not sure if that will work, but it is definitely worth a try. Let me know how you make out. Thanks!

unknown

I have used as &EDM-DED-CYCLE1=&EDM-DED-CYCLE2=X -> to make Ded-cycle 2 as active...

unknown

Hi Rainit, put an actual blank in there and it will blank out the cycle.

&EDM-DED-CYCLE1= &_DELIM=%09&_OUT=XML&_EOT=TRUE

tewright

Thanks for everyone's replies! Sorry for not responding sooner but I got sick late last week. So to answer a few questions:

I get no errors if I don't pass any value in the cycle fields. It just leaves the cycle at whatever it was set to previously

I just tried sending just a blank as suggested. So I had it set to:

&EDM-DED-CYCLE1= &EDM-DED-CYCLE2=&

That also didn't throw any errors but it still left cycle one populated with an "X". If I look at the log at the call made it encoded that space to "%20" but I don't think that matters.

The reason I'm trying to blank out the cycles is this update is to stop the deduction. It's a loan repayment. The file from the vendor has a stop date and I'm updating that but it's possible we have some payroll runs to do before that end date. I don't want any extra payments to come out so I'm just clearing the cycles fields to make sure we are safe. I could put a different stop/end date but I"d rather have that reflect what the vendor shows.

unknown

Hi Rainit, just by chance have you tested by trying to make a different change to the PR14, and did the AGS statement work for you? The reason I am asking is that I tested putting in the space and it did work for me. So if you have not tested to make sure your AGS statement works, you might want to do that. Sometimes you will get a "change complete," "add complete" etc message, but the record doesn't actually change and there is an error in your ags statement that Lawson is just not telling you about.

tewright

I am making other changes like entering the end date but I wanted to test this theory more. So originally I tried to set cycle1 to something else like "T" but the deduction isn't eligible for that. The records typically have cycle 1-3 set to X and then the rest of the cycles set to blank. So for my record all I did was change cycle5 to set it to X. This did set the cycle5 to X, HOWEVER this also blanked out all the other cycles like i wanted. I tested on the form and PR14 is totally fine with having all the cycles blank. So it seems like AGS call won't update the cycles to blank unless there is some other cycle field getting an update (that isn't blank)? Which would mean I can't blank out all cycles but I guess as a workaround I could set some cycle we rarely use to X and blank the rest.

unknown

OK Rainit - I tried some things too. I set up both a regular deduction and a benefit deduction up in test with X in cycles 1,2, and 3. I got both to work, but found that regular and benefit deductions behaved differently!

If I am trying to blank out cycle 1 for a regular deduction, just putting the space after cycle 1 in the AGS call works great. Here is the AGS I had success with:

_PDL=TEST&_TKN=PR14.1&_EVT=CHG&_RTN=DATA&_LFN=ALL&_TDS=IGNORE&FC=C&EDM-COMPANY=100&EDM-EMPLOYEE=1141&EDM-DED-CODE=C20&EDM-EFFECT-DATE=20200101&EDM-DED-CYCLE1= &_DELIM=%09&_OUT=XML&_EOT=TRUE

But if I try to blank out cycle 1 for a benefit deduction, the above AGS did not work. I had to add the sequence number, and then use no space at all for cycle 1. Here is the AGS call I had success with:

_PDL=TEST&_TKN=PR14.1&_EVT=CHG&_RTN=DATA&_LFN=ALL&_TDS=IGNORE&FC=C&EDM-COMPANY=100&EDM-DED-CODE=E20&EDM-DED-CYCLE1=&EDM-EFFECT-DATE=20200101&EDM-EMPLOYEE=1141&EDM-SEQ-NBR=60&_DELIM=%09&_OUT=XML&_EOT=TRUE

Try one of these, depending on the type of deduction, and see if it works.

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