Apparently there is an issue in SCORCH when trying to reuse a “Invoke Runbook Activity” that have previously been used. You will not be able to pass the parameters from the child runbook to the parent without re-creating the “Invoke Runbook Activity”. Not a big deal, but if you have an activity in your child runbook that is dependent on a value, this will cause odd behavior, as you will see what occurred with a “Send Email” activity that ended up spamming multiple users.

Here is the old “Invoke Runbook Activity” that I created parameters in the child Runbook from the “Initialize Data” activity. Notice how the parameters are not showing up.
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Now this is what the Runbook looks like by recreating the “Invoke Runbook Activity”. This particular Runbook utilizes the “Get User” activity and I will now input the published data fields to feed the child runbook.
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Now this is what the Runbook looks like by recreating the “Invoke Runbook Activity”. This particular Runbook utilizes the “Get User” activity and I will now input the published data fields to feed the child runbook.
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“Error sending e-mail. Exception in sending email: The parameter ‘addresses’ cannot be an empty string.
Parameter name: addresses
at System.Net.Mail.MailAddressCollection.Add(String addresses)
at SendEmail.Send(SendEmail* )”

Notice how it didn’t stop on the first success or failure, since the value was null it kept spamming the recipients field for everything and anything it could parse. This ended up spamming our address book until I killed the Runbook. After recreating the “Invoke Runbook Activity”, and validating no values were null, the intended SINGLE recipient received the e-mail. The odd thing is how the exchange connector parsed what would be null parameter. Just sending to a null address doesn’t mimic this behavior when the “Invoke Runbook Activity” is correctly initiated. Lesson of the day, DON’T REUSE “INVOKE RUNBOOK ACTIVITIES” Feeling very frustrated….

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