How to update an attribute in SystemSettings

rolfb

I want to update an attribute in SystemSettings for example SystemSettings.CustomerId =Customer.ID (rule in Customer)

When a new instance of Customer is created or when clicking on the SAVE button it works fine but my problem is i want to 'force' that rule so that the attribue is always updated

any help?

Rolf

aware_admin

What do you mean "always" updated? If the rule works when an object is created and saved, this means "always".

rolfb

Support,

Sorry - english is not my first language so my explanation was a bit vague.

What i tried to ask is if it is possible to update an attribute in SystemSettings
once a instance of Customer is displayed on a form without having to click the save button.

regards

Rolf

tford

Rolf,

Have you tried a dynamic rule?

Tom

rocketman

Hi Rolf,
When are you generatiing the customer ID? If you are generating it during the form initialisation (using for example customer.id = MAX.customer.id then you could do systemsettings.customerid=customer.id immediately after

technopak

Hi Rolf,

What's the purpose of your operation ?

Is it just to give each new customer created a unique ID, or are you trying to increment the SystemSettings.CustomerId when a customer is created, edited and saved etc ?

I don't quite get what you're trying to do - sorry if I'm being dumb 🙂

Can you expand a bit ?

Peter

rolfb

Hi Guys

Sory for a slow reply - was out of office for a few days

What i'm trying to achive is that when a user search a certain customer and get the information displayed, to update a value in SystemSettings.

When creating or saving a instance it works perfectly, but when nothing is changed on a exisiting instance of customer it is not updated. My feeling is that the 'rule engine' is only triggered when creating an instance or when changing an instance but NOT when nothing happens to an already created instance.

The business requirement is that the user wants to keep track of which customer instances has been 'looked at' even if no attribute has been changed. So i started experimenting with SystemSettings just to see if the rule is triggered when nothing happened when an isntance is displayed.

Tom, i tried your suggestion with no luck.

Hope this explanation is clear.

regards

Rolf

tford

Hi Rolf,

It helps to understand the business requirement.

You are correct that with "normal" rules, they only fire when a BO has is new or changed. In fact, you will notice in the configuration tool that in the tree view on the left, the Rule section of a BO says "Rules (when object is created or modified)"

I have done logging like you are talking about by creating a BO called ViewLog. You can make ViewLog owned by RegularUser.

To view a particular form, you could then use a process that would:
1) create ViewLog instance
2) view the particular form
3) timestamp each entry.

rolfb

Thanks a lot Tom!

Up to now i did not spent too much time on Aware, but the next few weeks i intend to dig into it - Hopefully you guys will be as supportive when i ask other questions

regards

Rolf

rocketman

Hi Rolf,

Without knowing too much about your app, another option might be to create a timestamp attribute actually in the Customer BO - maybe call it LastViewed. Then you create a rule of one line - customer.LastViewed = current_timestamp.

You then need to click the "Advanced" tab in the rule and click a checkbox which tells Aware to trigger the rule on initialisation of the form - ie just before the form is displayed. The rule will then always be triggered whenever a user selects the customer

If you don't need the time you could make it a date field and use Customer.lastviewed=curent_date.

Tom's Viewlog is great if you need to track viewing history over time but if you just need to know the last time somebody viewed a record, the above will work fine and saves creating a whole BO

technopak

Hi Rolf,

To satisfy your business requirement (as I read it), you could simply create a number attribute in your customer object and increment it every time your search process finds the object.

Using the same customer search criteria, you could use an IF EXISTS rule as part of your process to increment the number attribute.

Something like this should do it -

DISPLAY Customer WHERE Customer.criteria = Search.criteria
IF EXISTS Customer WHERE Customer.criteria = Search.criteria THEN Customer.ViewCount = Customer.ViewCount + 1

This way you can count and compare the number of views each customer has - as generated by your search process.

Hope I'm not mis-reading what you're trying to do 🙂

Peter

rolfb

Hi Guys

thanks for all the suggestions - it certainly helps expanding my knowledge of awareim.

I tried different variations of the rule language, and i believe that rule evaluation ONLY kicks in when an object is created or modified but...

looking at my app, i realised that the PROTECT action is always evaluated - even when an object is displayed on the form without any user intervention.
So this look like an exception within the rule 'engine' - maybe there are more rules which will cause this 'exception' but it is quite interesting.
So i thought let;s try and add more actions to this rule, and whenever i do that i get an 'Internal Error' when saving the instance. Why, i do not know. When i take the 2nd action out it works fine!!

Thanks a lot for all your help

Rolf