Picklist looses selection

robleer

I have a PICK ONE OR MORE FROM rule in a process.

The system shows the data in a picklist and I select a few records on the first page of the picklist.
Because I have about 100 records, the picklist shows several pages with records.
Then I go to the second page to pick more records.

When I then go back to the first page, the selection I made there is gone(???)

It looks like the picklist looses the records selected when navigating through te pages of the picklist. Is this a bug???

aware_support

This is a limitation - selection is not maintained across pages.

robleer

A limitation??

If you (Aware) develops a picklist where a user can select more than one items, why do you show multiple pages if it does not work at all???? There is even a 'select all' checkbox which gives the user the idea that he can 'select all items' (this is wat your system says not??)

How can I explain this to my users??? If never seen a system with this 'limitation'

Really strange.

pbrad

I'm going to try telling my wife that I can't shovel the snow this winter because it is a limitation. 😉

robleer

@[deleted]

hahahaha...that's AwareIM logic !
Do you work there?

But, in your example I would say my wife has to do the job and that would be my workaround. In the Aware picklist case I'm stuck...

pbrad

Sometimes workarounds are just not that acceptable to clients or wives so hopefully the AwareIM team can address this shortcoming at some point.

However, in the meantime, 100 records is not that many. Is there a reason why you wouldn't just show all 100 records in your 'Pick From' query rather than spread them throughout multiple screens which take time to refresh anyway?
cheers,
Pete

aware_support

Clients and wifes are just too fussy! :evil:

Seriously, though, it is a difficult limitation to get around - otherwise we would have removed it long time ago. Multiple pages are not useless without it - you can still navigate.

If you are displaying a 100 pages and forcing the user to maintain a selection across these pages, the user would have to be an Einstein. If you are displaying just several pages, then the workaround is to display a single page with a scroll bar.

robleer

Well, in this particular case I could work around it by showing one long list.

But is some (the most) cases you do not know how long the list will be and we find do not like to work with long lists. Thats where the pagination is for.

I think there will be a lot of mistakes when the user thinks that he selects all records and the system pick only the fist page.

Imagine what happens I a department manager want to send a important mail to all his employees, and only the first 15 or so receive it.

Something like: Dear colleques, you're all fired from today!

And then he is wondering why a lot of colleques start working the next day....

pbrad

I am encountering a similar dilemma where the user needs to pick from a list of almost 25,000 products in order to populate a list of stocked inventory items. Once a list gets large, I don't believe that pagination is really the correct solution anyway as the only thing that it does is to reduce the page load time.

I think that once a list becomes much longer than one or two hundred items, it becomes very difficult for users to comprehend and work with whether the list is paginated or not. In my case, the solution will be to try to reduce the size of the list through a preliminary search filter form so that the user can select specific vendors or product categories prior to viewing the pick query. Once I present the pick query I plan to do so in more of a wizard format so that I present several sequential (back-to-back) queries for them to pick from in order to build my list of items in context in order to present manageable queries that do not require pagination. This approach may not be practical in your case but I thought that I would at least make the suggestion.
Cheers,
Pete

rocketman

just a bit of lateral thinking - but (To AwareIM) would it be possible create a second "Temporary context" that could be populated whenever a user clicks the page forward/back button. This temporary context could then be made the main context when the OK button is clicked.

rocketman

more thinking.... The contents of the temporary context could be shown in another list so the user could keep track of what's been selected.

robleer

I understand all solutions, workarounds and concept ideas, but as a normal Aware customer I do not like this at all. This is really a lack in the design of Aware.

After years of development a basic thing of selecting multipe items in a grid must not be such a big deal. Else, don't show it this way in a grid or think someing else to show the data properly and do not let me struggle with these things.

As a user I do not want to think of all those stupid workarounds to work around such a basic thing. That's where a app framework as Aware is made for.

rocketman

The choice to paginate or not is for you to decide in the design. As Pbrad said, a very easy option (and in my opinion better for the end user) is to put a big number in the allowed entries per page, set a window size that is all visible on one screen and let the user scroll the list within that window. Works great and even works on iPads with a finger swipe.

My lateral thinking was really for the AwareIM guys to digest rather than other forum members to chuck stones at. Maybe I'll just PM them next time

robleer

@Rocketman

I really appreciate your help of course, but I was a little frustrated about the 'this is a limitation' answer on such a basic thing. I've spend quite a lot of time in designing the systems layout and was almost ready to publish when I found out this problem. This issue causes quite a lot of extra work and I was already over my deadline.

My apologies for my crumpy reaction and I will be a little more cooperative from now.

RocketRod

I'm just off on another slight tangent whilst looking at all these comments. I'm always adding to my wish list and it would be nice to allow the user to be able to change the number of rows displayed per page dynamically on all queries rather than being hard coded by the developer. Their value should be a starting point.

Cheers Rod

rocketman

good idea Rob, and Robleer - no problem, we all get a bit frustrated some days.

Just for fun - here's a sign which is displayed in my local store (available for purchase)

"I can only please one person per day. Today isn't your day and tomorrow isn't looking too promising either"

pbrad

So I assume that we can consider this horse officially flogged to death?

aware_support

Multiple selection across pages is now supported in version 5.5