Editing an Array of Objects Using a Grid Pane

Arrays of objects may be represented in forms using a grid pane. The grid pane can be configured to support adding or deleting records in the underlying array of objects.

Note: In earlier Forms tutorials, we made changes to the business object model, and not directly to the form. In this way, we were able to customize the form while continuing to use the default form. The advantage of doing so is that the default form is continually and automatically synchronized with the underlying data.

But for this tutorial, we will make changes directly to the form, forgoing that advantage in order to make further customizations. Once we open the form for editing, it becomes a customized form, rather than a default form. This means the form must be manually synchronized with the data by opening the business process, right-clicking the user task, and clicking Form > Synchronize.

Procedure

  1. Open the Notification of claim business process in the editor view.
  2. Right-click the Record no-fault claim details user task and click Form > Open.
  3. A warning message will appear telling you that the customized form will no longer be kept in sync with the activity interface. Click OK.
  4. Click the Witness pane to select it. Be sure to click outside of the Name and Address text fields so that it is the Witness pane, and not one of its text fields, whose properties appear in the Properties view.
  5. In the Properties view, click the Properties tab.
  6. In the Maximum Visible Rows field, type 4. This means that only 4 rows will be visible when the form is opened. More rows will be there if there are more than 4 witnesses, but the user will have to scroll to see them.
  7. Check the checkboxes for Support Add Operation and Support Delete Operation.
  8. In the Label field for Support Add Operation, type Add Witness. In the Label field for Support Delete Operation, type Remove Witness. These labels will appear on the form within the buttons that invoke those actions.
  9. Save the form and click the GI Preview tab to preview the form.
  10. Experiment with adding and removing witnesses from the grid pane, using the Add Witness and Remove Witness buttons.

Result

Next Steps

You can now:

  • Install the solution to this Tutorial and compare it with your version. See the instructions in the following section for how to do this.
  • Proceed to the next tutorial "How to Customize the Appearance of a Form," which describes how to alter the look and feel of a form so that it’s appearance conforms to your organization’s design guidelines.
  • Optionally, you can assign participants to the user tasks. To do this:
    1. Assign a position in the organization model (from the project EasyAsExtendedOMSolution that you imported earlier) as the participant for each of the user tasks. The How to Design a Simple "WelcomeUsers" Process tutorial describes how to do that.
    2. If you wish, you can then deploy the project, as described in the How to Implement and Deploy the "Welcome Users" Application for deploying the "WelcomeUsers" project.
Next topic: Verifying the Tutorial Solution
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