How do I rearrange the order of the Mentions in a Expression in VersionOne?

Question

I create Conversations for VersionOne Assets programatically using the Java API. When checking the conversations on the Web UI, I see that the assets mentioned are alphabetically arranged.

I would like to know if there is a way to override the default arrangement of the mentions. The target arrangement would be from Parent Asset -> Children.

Something like this:

• Default: Add reset Button (Task), Add submit Button (Task), Create UI (Story)
• Target: Create UI (Story), Add reset Button (Task), Add submit Button (Task)

Some things I tried:

1. Looking at the Expression and Message metadata. Can't find anything related to either sorting or ordering.

2. Adding the Parent Asset 1st followed by the children:

   // create a new conversation; this will act as the container of the expression (message)
   
   IAssetType conversationType = super.connection.metaModel.getAssetType(CONVERSATION);
   Asset conversationAsset = super.connection.services.createNew(conversationType, Oid.Null);
   super.connection.services.save(conversationAsset);
   
   // create a new expression containing the error message
   
   IAssetType expressionType = super.connection.metaModel.getAssetType(EXPRESSION);
   IAttributeDefinition expressionContentAttr = super.connection.metaModel.getAttributeDefinition(EXPRESSION_CONTENT);
   IAttributeDefinition expressionBelongsTo = super.connection.metaModel.getAttributeDefinition(EXPRESSION_BELONGS_TO);
   IAttributeDefinition expressionMentionsAttr = super.connection.metaModel.getAttributeDefinition(EXPRESSION_MENTIONS);
   
   Asset expressionAsset = super.connection.services.createNew(expressionType, Oid.Null);
   
   // set the message
   expressionAsset.setAttributeValue(expressionContentAttr, message);
   
   // add the message to the conversation
   expressionAsset.setAttributeValue(expressionBelongsTo, conversationAsset.oid);
   
   // set the context of the expression to belong to the VersionOne record
   Oid oid = Oid.fromToken(entity.oid, super.connection.metaModel);
   expressionAsset.addAttributeValue(expressionMentionsAttr, oid);
   
   // add mentions of other assets to the conversation
   for (String assetOid : assetOids) {
       Oid otherOid = Oid.fromToken(assetOid, super.connection.metaModel);
       expressionAsset.addAttributeValue(expressionMentionsAttr, otherOid);
   }
   
   super.connection.services.save(expressionAsset);
   

Answer 1

If you check meta, you’ll see that Mentions is a multi-relation attribute. Unfortunately there is no way to set the order of items in the multi-relational attribute. Here’s the query for checking meta:

https://www14.v1host.com/v1sdktesting/meta.v1/Expression?xsl=api.xsl

The VersionOne UI has some logic that is setting the order of the Conversation mentions before displaying them.