What is a View Action?

The 

Creating View Actions

1. Click the 

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    icon in the toolbar to display existing tables in the application
   1. Existing tables can be dragged from the Repository onto the canvas - choose

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       in the pop-up box to create a View action node
2. Alternatively, drag the 

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    icon from the toolbar onto the canvas and select a primary table to view from the drop down list

Worked

Example

Here's a worked example using the School Data (available from the Learning Centre).

We want to be able to add and edit the courses. The first step to doing this is by creating two Open Screen Actionflows. Both will open the same screen containing an input form, but when we are adding a new course, we want an empty input form, and when we are editing an existing course, we want the input form to contain course dataIn this example we will configure an Actionflow to change the Status of a Course when a Teacher's Status is changed, i.e. changing a Teacher's Status to Inactive causes a Course's Status to change to On Hold. SCREENSHOTS?

In this example, we are using:

• a Course Teacher Management screen containing a grid of the School Courses Teachers data - the screen was created using the Tile with Buttons template
• a Course Teacher Form screen containing form fields, associated with School Courses Teachers data by a background filter - the screen was created using the Edit Form template

To save the new or edited course, the Save Action on the input form must be configured. See 1.09 Save Action Configuration.

Note: When creating a new screen in PhixFlow, a Grid Actions wizard can configure the Create, Read, Update and Delete (CRUD) actions for you. For the purposes of understanding the mechanics of Actionflows, we will create these manually.

• a Course Management screen containing a grid of the School Courses data - the screen was created using the Tile with Buttons template

Dynamic Updates Between Tables

Using a View Action, modify the Save Actionflow for the School Teachers data to dynamically retrieve and update the School Courses data.

Setup the View Action

1. Open the Save Actionflow for the Teachers Form
2. Click on the input connection point to open the Connector Mappings
3. Drag the TeacherStatus attribute from the left to the Drag and Drop area on the right 
   1. Click Save
4. Drag a View Action from the toolbar onto the canvas
   1. Name: Get Courses
   2. Primary Table: choose School Courses 
   3. Select Create Action
5. Drag and drop the View action you just created onto the in connector between the input node and the Save action
6. Click on the in connector between the input node and the View node to open the Mappings
7. Drag both the TeacherID and TeacherStatus attributes from the left to the Drag and Drop area on the right
   1. Select Save
8. Click on the View Action to open the properties
   1. In the Output Attributres section, select the 

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       icon
      1. Drag the CourseID and CourseStatus attributes into the Output Attributes section in the properties
      2. Select OK
   2. In the Data Retrieval Options section, click the 

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       next to Filter and create a filter:
      1. Name: ByTeacher
      2. Filter Details: 
      3. Select 

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   3. Select 

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       on the properties

Setup the Calculate Action

Create a Calculate Action to alter the CourseStatus based on the TeacherStatus.

1. Drag a View Action from the toolbar onto the canvas
   1. Name: Change Course Status
   2. Select Create Action
2. Drag and drop the Calculate action you just created onto the in connector between the View action node and the Save action node
3. Click on the in connector between the View action node and the Calculate action node
4. Map across the CourseStatus, TeacherID and TeacherStatus attributes as these are needed for the Calculate action
   1. Select Save
5. Click on the Calculate action to open its properties
6. In the output attribute section, click 

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    to create a new output attribute:
   
   1. Name: NewCourseStatus
   2. Type: Choose String

   3. Expression: 

      
      

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      // If TeacherStatus is Inactive, set CourseStatus to On Hold if( in.TeacherStatus == "Inactive", $pfCourseStatus = "On Hold", // Else, set CourseStatus to Open $pfCourseStatus = "Open" )

      
      

   4. Select 

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Setup an Additional Save Action

As we are modifying the Save Actionflow for the Teachers table, we need an additional Save action to save the NewCourseStatus to the Courses table.

1. Drag a Save Action from the toolbar onto the canvas
   1. Name: Save Courses
   2. Table: Choose School Courses table
   3. Select Create Action
2. In the Save Action's properties, toggle on Auto Save Attributes
3. Hover over the calculate action and select out
4. When the red arrow shows, click on the Save Courses action node
5. On the Mappings window:
   1. drag the NewCourseStatus attribute from the left onto the CourseStatus attribute on the right
   2. drag the CourseID attribute from the left onto the CourseID attribute on the right
   3. Select Save