colArea.moveToNextStep() does not trigger any validation that are present on Exit value

Agree with you .. in the above case all the validations are currently placed on submit ..

While i am it moving from one step to another step in work flow the exist value is coming as null that's why the validations were not triggered ... moving all the validations on to save is not a wise idea as every time user saves the item these will get trigger .which will impact performance

It seems that the implementation has a Post Processing script attached to the catalog where they have some validations written which throws validation error when item doesn’t fulfill some criteria. When the item is moved from one step to next step through UI (by clicking SUBMIT/DONE button) this Post Processing script is called and those validation errors are shown when it doesn’t fulfill the requirement.

One possible way to achieve your requiremen is to call CollaborationItem.save and then check if there are validation errors or not and accordingly proceed to call ItemCollaborationArea.moveToNextStep. Return type of CollaborationItem.save is ExtendedValidationErrors. So sample snippet would be:

CollaborationAreaManager mgr = PIMContextFactory.getCurrentContext().getCollaborationAreaManager();

CollaborationArea colab = mgr.getCollaborationArea("mobile ca");

PIMCollection<CollaborationObject> colObjs = colab.getStep("step1").getContents();

inArgs.getOutput().println("Processing");

for(CollaborationObject col : colObjs){

CollaborationItem item = (CollaborationItem)col;

inArgs.getOutput().println(item.getPrimaryKey());

ExtendedValidationErrors errors = item.save();

if(errors != null){

List<ValidationError> err = errors.getErrors();

inArgs.getOutput().println("Error Check: " + err.isEmpty());

for(ValidationError ers : err){

inArgs.getOutput().println("Error: " + ers.getMessage());

//Handle call to ItemCollaborationArea.moveToNextStep

}

}

break; //Assuming we have only one item in the collaboration area

}