🪲 Private fields not mapping as variables in create tasks/subtasks rule action

[Richard_Sather]

I have noticed the past couple of weeks that a rule is not working as it used to, without any modifications to it.

The rule has a subtask action to ‘map’ over the value of a number field into the same field of a subtask when it gets created using the ‘Create subtasks’ rule action. This worked fine up until 2-3 weeks ago when the number value stopped being copied over into the subtask’s number value.

I tried duplicating the rule, creating another one from scratch but still the same problem. I realised today that the number field is set to private field (available on Enterprise). Once I made it public and ran the rule, it worked as it did - the number value was copied into the subtask value.

Now, I am fairly sure that I had this set to a private field long before this effect started to happen. So without touching my rules but having the behaviour change, I am concluding this is a bug.

Looking forward to anyone recreating this and confirming the same (if you are on Enterprise):

1. Create a blank project.
2. Create a number field, click on Manage access and set it to a private field
3. Create a rule in that project to create subtasks and map the private number field to the same field of the subtask using the + variable.
4. Then Repeat the same for a non-private number field, to compare results.
   
   

When I run the rule, the private field does not map the value, but the ‘public’ field does:

Funny thing, when I tried building this rule in my legacy phoenix demo space I actually got this:

Further tests show that the same applies to the Create tasks rule action too.
Kindly asking @Forum-team to escalate.
Cc @Julio_Buendia

Thanks!

[Leigh_Flynn]

Hi, Richard. I experienced something similar back in February, and the conclusion from Support is that the system requires the Guest role to have user access to conduct operations on custom fields including inheritance, but is locked out of those rights when the field is private. I ended up having to change those fields back to public.

Discussed here:

Issues writing into private fields

Hi all, Is anyone else experiencing issues with rules writing into private custom fields? When I use a rule to change the private custom field - it works only as long as it’s applied to the same task. If I try to create a new task or subtask with any value (dynamic or static) in the private custom field it comes up blank. It also doesn’t seem to be an issue with reading the value from the trigger task, as you can write the value into non-private fields in a new task (like the task title). I’v…

From my conversation with Support:

[Richard_Sather]

Hi @Leigh_Flynn , thanks for the feedback and linking to that post - I had missed that!

The other reason I am fairly convinced this is a bug is because, in the rule editor, there is actually a warning message that the data of a private field will be ‘visible’ to in the resulting task.

For me, that confirms that the expected behaviour is that the value of the private field should be copied over.

[Iren_Vilaniso]

Appreciate everyone’s input! This has been reported to the team as a bug. I’ll share any updates here once I hear back. Thank you!

[Richard_Sather]

Thanks, @Iren_Vilaniso!

[Richard_Sather]

Glad to see this Critical Bugs > In Progress