Utilities and Activities Forms
Utilities and activities are specialized forms that are usually associated with other, more basic forms. They typically process multiple records in one operation, performing tasks such as purging records, updating values, posting transactions, or changing the status of records.
For instance, suppose you need to change the status of a range of job operations to Complete. You could use a Complete Job Operations utility to change them all at one pass, rather than having to change each job operation separately.
Utilities and activities forms typically present pairs of fields and other options that allow you to define ranges of and criteria for records to be processed.
Previewing and Selecting Records
Many (though not all) utilities and activities forms include a grid section, in which you can preview records before processing. Often, these forms include a Select check box for each record that is returned for preview. When you select a record using this option, the system displays an indicator in the row label for that record that indicates that the record has been selected but not yet processed.
On such forms, when you select Commit and click , the system processes all (and only) selected records, that is, all records with the Select option selected and the modified indicator in the row label. If all selected records process successfully, then typically the system refreshes the form. Normally, when the form is refreshed, all selected records, having already been processed, no longer display.
In a case where the system is set to process records individually, there might occur an error midway through processing of records. In this case, typically, the records that were processed before the error occurred are already committed in the database. The collection is not refreshed, so they still appear in the grid; yet the modified indicator is now gone. If you then attempt again to process the records, these records are not processed again.
In a case where the system is set to process all records as a batch, and there occurs an error, the system does not complete the processing of any records. In this case, the system returns all records to the status they had before processing was attempted.