Clarity

  • 1.  Conditionally mandatory field

    Posted Aug 16, 2016 05:48 AM

    There has been some discussion here about locking fields once something has happened.

     

    My question is a variation of the theme: How can a field be made mandatory once another field is populated?

    Is that possible and feasible?  Anything other than a process?



  • 2.  Re: Conditionally mandatory field
    Best Answer

    Posted Aug 16, 2016 08:42 AM

    No can do I think.


    And don't think a process helps either (since we can't make things conditionally mandatory at all). A process (or job or portlet) could report on data that is setup wrong, but thats not ideal either.



  • 3.  Re: Conditionally mandatory field

    Posted Aug 16, 2016 09:15 AM

    Are you saying that a process cannot make a field mandatory and not mandatory? The evaluation of the condition could be in the process.



  • 4.  Re: Conditionally mandatory field

    Posted Aug 16, 2016 09:20 AM

    Yes (it can't).

     

    Mandatory nature of a field is a property of the object definition, not of a specific instance on that object.

    You could do other things in the process after you 'test a condition' - like email someone, set an error flag / error status against the record, don't proceed to the next stage-gate... but none of that is "making a field mandatory" as I would interpret that.



  • 5.  Re: Conditionally mandatory field

    Posted Aug 16, 2016 02:36 PM

    Thank you for the education.

    I was under the impression that required is a value in a db field, though.

    I see the light. Mandatory would be object level so that changing that would change the value for all object instances and not record level which would be instance level. Like XOGing objects vs instances.

    Apparently Locking attributes which can be obtained is record or instance level.

    So the other things

    What the user wants is if there is a manager assigned then there must be a target date.

    He then tells is so that if there is a value entered for manager then target date should be mandatory.

    In CA PPM mandatory would do the trick: you cannot save the instances, you get an error message and the field in question is high lighted.

    Two out of three were good:

    Not being able to save and

    Error message

     

    Is that easier to do?



  • 6.  Re: Conditionally mandatory field

    Posted Aug 16, 2016 02:54 PM

    We have a number of conditions that require something similar. So we decided to create the appropriate documentation to let the users know what has to be filled out and when, and created a governance portlet. The governance portlet lights up wherever data is missing.

    It is amazing how fast data gets updated when the report gets distributed.



  • 7.  Re: Conditionally mandatory field

    Posted Aug 16, 2016 02:59 PM

    Thanks.

    How does

    The governance portlet lights up wherever data is missing.

    work?

    You open the portlet and missing data is highlighted or does the portlet somehow pop to get your attention?



  • 8.  Re: Conditionally mandatory field

    Posted Aug 17, 2016 03:51 AM

    "Apparently Locking attributes which can be obtained is record or instance level."

    yes it is ; there is a database table (odf_locked_attributes) which records the object name, attribute name and instance id (odf_pk) of the relevant locked attribute. presumably the GUI must interrogate that table every time it renders a screen (so a very highly used table I guess! )

     

    "What the user wants is if there is a manager assigned then there must be a target date.

    ...

    Is that easier to do?"

    Not really sure what it is that you are asking "is easier" ; you have two choices in the GUI - either make the field mandatory when the user saves the data (in which case it must always be entered irrespective of whether the "manager" is set or not), or you don't make it mandatory at the save point, but then you have to verify the data-set-up later (whether thru a process notifying someone, thru a report, a portlet (i.e. Mike's "governance portlet") - whatever that answer is, it involves some manual-process in order to preservce data-integrity according to your desired "business rules".

     

    Either way is a compromise of one sort or another



  • 9.  Re: Conditionally mandatory field

    Posted Aug 17, 2016 05:18 AM

    OK, I've chosen No can do to be the correct answer offered to the user and Mike's answer helpful if the user insist on something in type of work around. Thank you both.