Associate records task
An Associate Records task can create an association between two records or remove an association between two records. Also, if defined in the Data Modeler, the reverse association is created or removed.
- Label
- This is the label used to identify this task. This field's text appears in the drawing that represents this workflow task. Use the standards in Workflow naming conventions.
- Description
- A description of this task goes in this field.
The radio buttons under these fields determine whether this task will create or remove an association.
When the properties form is first displayed, only the currently selected radio button is visible. The visible radio button has a down arrow button. Clicking the down-arrow button alternately makes all the radio buttons visible or just the selected radio button visible.
- Associate using ____
- If the Associate using radio button is selected, an association having the specified name is created from the records identified by the Create the association from section to the record identified by the To section, unless such an association already exists.
- Remove the association____
- If the Remove the association radio
button is selected, an association having the specified name is removed
from the records identified by the Remove
the association from section to the record identified by the Where the associated record is section.
The form for an Associate Records task when Remove the association
is selected is shown in the following figure.
Figure 1. Associate Records properties for Remove the association 
To the right of both radio buttons is an Association icon. The Association icon is used to specify the name of the association to be created or removed. The name of the specified association appears to the right of the Association icon.
- Formulas
Defines whether or not the changes made by this task could be put in the Extended Formula Queue for further consideration. The default is Disable Auto Recalculation. To change the value, click the recalculate formulas icon.
The three possible values are as follows:- Recalculate as Needed
- Recalculates most formulas only if any input value of the formula changed during the task's activities. Extended formulas that contain query and/or association tokens are recalculated on every save.
- Disable Auto Recalculation
Extended formulas that contain query tokens, association tokens, or both are not recalculated. All other formulas are recalculated only if any input value of the formula changed during the task's activities.
Extended formulas that contain query tokens, association tokens, or both can take longer to calculate, so this option is an available performance optimization for isolated use cases.
An example of an appropriate use of Disable Auto Recalculation is within a DataConnect task that is importing a large number of space records. You may wish to delay any floor or space rollup recalculations until after all the space records have been imported.
- Recalculate All
Forces every formula to be recalculated during the record's save.
Selecting Recalculate All may slow performance.
An example of an appropriate use of Recalculate All is in a data cleansing workflow that refreshes formula values in the database that are stale for whatever reason. For example, if the definition of a formula changes for a business object, existing records may contain incorrect values as a result of the change. You may wish to use Recalculate All in a maintenance workflow that runs through the records and updates their formula values.
- Create the association from / Remove the association from
The second section of the Associate Records task properties form is labeled Create the association from or Remove the association from, depending on whether the Associate using or the Remove the association radio button is selected. The purpose of this second section is to identify the first record in the association.
For the sake of brevity, we refer to the record in this section as the first record and refer to the record in the next section as the second record. You can think of this as Create an association from the first record to the second record, or Remove the association from the first record to the second record.
- To / Where the associated record is
The third section of the Associate Records task properties form is labeled To or Where the associated record is, depending on whether the Associate using or the Remove the association radio button is selected. The purpose of the third section is to identify the second record in the association.
This section also provides the option of using an existing record.