setWorkflow(false) could only stop copying case work notes to incident work notes, but does not affect copying case work notes to incident short description - Support and Troubleshooting

setWorkflow(false) could only stop copying case work notes to incident work notes, but does not affect copying case work notes to incident short description Issue When trying to copy work notes when using setWorkflow(). They are trying to send work notes from case to work notes of incident by using setWorkflow(false), but unable to. Release An environment that uses Business Rules and set.Workflow(false)

Cause This is expected behavior Resolution The work_notes field is a field with the journal type. The behavior that setWorkflow(false) prevents work_notes from getting added is actually a expected behavior. The work_notes in case or incident are stored in the sys_journal_field table. When ever you have a work note added to a case or a incident, there is a data entry added to the sys_journal_field table. The data from this journal field work_notes get copied to the sys_journal_field table using some Business Rules at backend. As backend business rules are used for setting work notes field, calling setWorkflow(false) disables the business rules.

According to the documentation Set Work Flow Boolean , setWorkflow(Boolean e) enables or disables the running of business rules that might normally be triggered by subsequent actions. If true (default), it enables business rules. If false, it disables business rules.

When you call setWorkflow(false), the business rules get skipped and disabled. As a result, data from the work_notes field can not be copied to the sys_journal_field table. In your case, the data entry for work_notes in incident can not be copied to the sys_journal_field table from the data entry for work_notes in case. That is the reason why work note can not be copied from case to incident when using setWorkflow(false).

However if you try to copy any other fields like short_description , system will copy the data successfully even if you set setWorkflow(false) before the "incidentRecord.update()" statement. This is because for updating the other fields like short_description, no business rule is involved so that "incidentRecord.update()" will take care of updating the values.

The values are not getting updated for journal fields like work_notes when setWorkflow(false) is used is a expected behavior based on the design of the workflow engine and how journal field gets updated. Workflow engine wakes up for every insert, update and delete event on a task record.