Personas: Moving fields from subscreen to a main screen

[Former Member]

I am attempting to use Personas to simplify the VA02 order change transaction.  One of the key requirements is to move many of the fields which are buried in the subscreens (located under Goto/Header) to the main screen.  I know that it's not possible to move the actual field since they are two seperate screens, but I have been trying to recreate the field on the main screen and sync that "fake" field with the real field from the subscreen.   Unfortunately, I've run into a few obstacles and I'm wondering if anyone has had any luck making this work?  The main issues I've encountered are as follows:

1. I have written a script which populates the "fake" field from the subscreen value, but I am unable to figure out a way to then update the original subscreen field when the user updates the fake field.  My preference is to avoid making them click on a button to run the scripts, but I haven't seen a method to automatically run a script based on what the user is doing (i.e., saving, opening, etc).  Also, the users will sometimes need to leave the main screen during editing to go to the item subscreens.  When I do that, the values I previously entered into the "fake" fields are wiped out.  The functionality around new Personas fields seems to depend on the user staying on that screen (I'm assuming leaving the screen effectively clears the memory of values in those fields).
2. I have not found a way to automatically populate the dropdown of a "fake" field on the main screen with the values that exist in the real field on the subscreen.
3. Complex screen elements (grids, long text boxes, etc) can't be recreated onto the main screen...I've long since given up on the hope of finding a way to do that.
4. Grids can not be combined into a single grid...like #3, I've given up on the idea that there might be a way to make this work.

The Personas field functionality seems to work fine for displaying values, but once I start allowing updates to the values in the fake fields, it starts to fall apart.  Perhaps I'm trying to force the tool to do more than it can at this point, but I wanted to ask the question to see if anyone has done anything similar with any success.   Thanks!

[Former Member]

Hi, I followed your very interesting discussion! I've a similar problem, but in addition I'm wondering how to get F1 help for fields that have been replicated from a subscreen to the main screen and thus are custom fields now...

Thanks for your help in advance,

Stefan

[tamas_hoznek]

There is no feature that would provide this for custom fields, since the functionality relies on the data element in the Data Dictionary which the Personas custom fields don't refer to.

I think your best bet is to use the tooltip feature to provide the necessary help text for these fields.

[former_member188001]

Thanks a lot everyone. This is very helpful. One more question....or rather confirmation..since its going to be a fake field, we cannot give F4 help on that field as well...correct ? Is there a way to do it?

[tamas_hoznek]

In Personas 3.0, this feature is built into the tool and you can define any search help for a custom field.

In earlier (Silverlight-based) Personas releases this is possible in many (most?) cases, but the process is far from straightforward... you can find a blog post about it here.

[former_member188001]

Thanks a lot Tamas.

[Former Member]

Thanks Steve and Sushant, you've give me some good suggestions which I can utilize when trying to get my screens to work and have confirmed some of my suspicions about the limitations.  I appreciate your help!

[Former Member]

For items 2, 3 and 4 you are right. There's currently no way to achieve what you are looking for. With item 1, though, there is still hope.

For example, you say "I haven't seen a method to automatically run a script based on what the user is doing (i.e., saving, opening, etc)." You can do that by hiding the standard save button and replacing it with a script button that copies values back from your custom fields on the main screen to their "real" locations on the subscreens, and then pushes the save button.

As for refreshing the values when you navigate between screens, you can use the "onCreateHandler" action on the main screen to re-populate the custom fields.

Between these two techniques I think you should be able to get quite close to what you want. Let me know if you need anything more!

Steve.

[Former Member]

Thanks Steve, I hadn't thought of the Save button trick, good tip!  I had my script embedded in the oncreatehandler, but haven't been able to figure out how to get the system to retain the newly entered field values (the values entered into the "fake" fields) when the user left the main screen to go to the Item subscreen.   I suppose I could replace all of the between-screen navigation with scripts to do specific things (read the value from the subscreen when initially entering the transaction, update the subscreen with the value from the main screen when leaving the main screen, update the main screen with the value from the subscreen when returning to the main screen), but that gets a bit ugly...particularly when you factor in the various ways that are built into the system to navigate between screens such as double clicks on the item line etc.

As I was testing this I also noticed that if I create a fake combobox field it always resets itself back to the default value (blank) whenever the screen refreshes.  So if the user updates the field with a value, a simple hit of the enter key resets the field value back to the default again.  This seems awefuly hokey...maybe I have a setting wrong somewhere that's causing that to happen.

[Former Member]

No, you don't have a setting wrong. Custom fields don't retain their values as well as you'd like. I too find that frustrating.

I do try to simplify the navigation in a complex transaction, which makes things like this a little easier. For example, often the double-click action is undesirable. You want the user to navigate via a script button and the double-click side steps it, or maybe it does a drill-down to somewhere you don't want the user to go. You can't disable it, but if you put a transparent label over the offending fields and make sure it is in front of the standard object, the double-click won't work! I use this especially on reports, where I don't want to allow drilldown. You can make the label as big as you need - maybe covering almost everything except the script buttons you want the user to use for navigation.

You'll still probably end up with something complex, but tricks like this can make it workable.

Steve.

[sushant_priyadarshi]

Hi Steve,

Just to add to your point, you can also make use of transparent image.

It was done for one of the customer's flavor. To give a little background:

-> Requirement was to make some fields visible throughout WITHOUT using tab caching

So lets say, TAB1 has fields F1 and F2.

What i did, without enabling tab caching for this TAB1, I pulled out the fields F1 and F2

(Problem: Now if you switch tabs, your F1 and F2 will disappear)

SO, you create a fake textbox for both F1 and F2 (lets name them as FF1 and FF2).

My flavor will be like this.

-Create FF1

-Put a transparent image on top of it

-Put F1 on top of it

I put another transparent image on top of TAB 2 with a pushonclick script attached to it which copied from F1 and F2 and put it on FF1 and FF2.

So lets say user is on TAB1. He will see the original textboxes (F1 and F2).

Now, i want to switch to TAB2. I click on TAB 2 but actually I am clicking on IMAGE which copies the elemnets from real to fake and press Tab 2.

Now user in TAB 2. He will be able to see the contents of TAB1 (through fake textboxes since i have changed tab so the original F1 and F2 have disappeared)

SO a user will see textbox elements of TAB 1 even if he is in TAB2.

Next step was, what if the user wants to edit the fake ones from TAB 1 when on TAB 2.

Since when on TAB 2, FF1 and FF2 are visible with values. So when i click on fake guys, I am actually clicking on the transparent image.

So i introduced another script as pushonclick to this image which clicks on TAB 1.

The user when on TAB2 clicks on fake textbox (clicks on transparent image) and when TAB 1 is activated, his original textboxes will be visible (hiding the fake ones).

It sounds complex (was a bit), but it actually turned out really nice flavor and we were able to avoid many tab caching requests because of this.

I am attaching a transparent image just in case anyone wants to use.

nothing.png

nothing.png - Google Drive

Kindly let me know if this is confusing. I can certainly make a quick video.

Regards,

Sushant

[Former Member]

That's really nice, and I can imagine has better performance if you're just wanting to cache just a couple of fields. I guess this also works in cases where tab caching doesn't because of compulsory fields on some of the tabs. I'll definitely be remembering this trick

Steve.

[Taha_j]

Hi Sushant,

What would you do if you wanted a table from tab1 fields from tab2 and another table in tab3. Is it possible to use tab caching and achieve data from all these tabs in a single screen without tabs?

[Former Member]

Without knowing the transaction involved, the general answer is yes, that is certainly possible. Just turn on tab caching for the three tabs in question, move the whole tab set away from where you want everything to ultimately live, drag the fields and tables you want to their final resting place, and finally hide the original tab set.

There may be issues if the transaction you are talking about has mandatory fields on some of the tabs you are caching.

We're starting to hijack somebody else's thread now, so if you have any problems doing this, create a new thread and we'll help you over there.

Steve.

[former_member188001]

Hey Sushant,

This is great..is it possible to make a quick video for better understanding for startup guys like me?

Thanks,

Salil