Changing form properties

If your administrator has given you access, you can personalize form behavior in several ways. This topic describes the properties that can be changed and how to change them.

Accessing form property personalizations

Open a form that you want to change in Infor Smart Office. From the Tools menu, select Personalization > Form Properties. Click on the appropriate tabs to make the changes you want to make.

General properties tab

This tab is for changing and viewing properties related to the overall functioning of a form.

  • Title: You can assign a custom title to a form. If you attempt to use a title that has already been assigned or is reserved, you will be prompted.

  • Initial action: Determine the action that a form will perform upon initialization. For example, if you want the form to always perform an inquire when you open it, you can select "I" from the drop-down.

  • Default action: Set a custom default action for a form. This means that if you perform a particular action more often than others, you can save time by making that action the default.

    For example, suppose you are most likely to perform Change operations on existing records and, by default, the form you are working with has no default, which means you have to select Change. The form default can be set to Change. In this case, you would only have to reset the action when you wanted to perform an action other than Change.

  • XML attributes: View the internal field names and other technical properties of a form. These attributes cannot be changed.

  • Allow Administrator personalization only: If checked, only administrators will be allowed to make personalization changes to that view. It is possible to have multiple views of a form each with its own setting and depending on the Role setting for managing/selecting views, users may still be allowed to do some personalization to a form, but not to the admin-only views.

Actions

This tab lets you determine which actions, of those that are available to a form, will be available to you. You can also use it, in conjunction with a work flow program such as Lawson Process Automation, to attach a trigger to a form action.

  • Available actions: This list contains all actions that have been defined by Lawson. If you want only a subset of the actions to be available, select them and click Add to send them to the Selected actions list. If no items are in Selected Actions, all items in Available actions are available.

  • Selected actions: If items are in this list, it means you have created a personalized list of actions. Only items in Selected actions will be available to you. If you want to return to the delivered form actions, remove all actions from this list by selecting Remove All. To remove only some of the actions in the list, select it and then click Remove. To send an item from Available actions to Selected actions, select it and then click Add.

  • Work flow triggers: A work flow trigger is identified by an asterisk (*) next to its name in the Available actions list. Select a trigger and send it to the Selected actions list. From the Selected actions list, select it again and then click Edit. This opens a dialog box for defining the service you want to use with the trigger and for specifying criteria, variables and so on.

    If you need more information about how to specify a service, review the documentation for the Lawson work flow program that you use, for example, Lawson Process Automation.

    Note: In order to access work flow triggers, your user profile must include access to the Lawson System Foundation LOGAN tables, WFSERVICE and WFSRVVAR. If you are not seeing work flow triggers when you believe you should, contact your system administrator.

Related tab

This tab is where you can define the form that will be available to move directly to from the current form.

  • Available related forms: By default, this list contains all forms that are available to move to from this form as defined by Infor. If you want only a subset of the forms to be related to this one, select them and click Add to send them to the Selected Actions list. If no items are in Selected related forms, all forms in Available related forms are available to you.

  • Selected related forms: If items are in this list, it means you have created a personalized list of related forms. Only items in Selected related forms will be available to you. If you want to return to the delivered list of related forms, remove all forms from this list by selecting Remove All. To remove only some of the forms in the list, select it and then click Remove. To send an item from Available related forms to Selected related forms, select it and then click Add.

Data properties tab

This tab is for customizing the fields that are sent with a transaction and for changing properties of form fields.

You might want to select fields for a transaction if, for example, a Lawson form contains fields that are not used at your site. When you want to perform a query, database access time is faster if only the required fields are sent.

  • Use Change EVT: For fields that must be inquired upon before an update transaction can be performed, Transaction can pre-fill the fields with inquiries so that a custom form can perform an update. Use Change EVT to perform the inquiries. Typically, you would select this only if you are not sending all fields.

  • Send all fields / send selected fields: Use this feature to change the data that is sent when a transaction is made. Typically, you will leave this as Send All.

    If you choose to use selected fields, these field properties can be enabled or disabled for the custom form:

    • Output only: Users cannot select or drill on this field in the custom form.

    • Allow select: Select is enabled for the custom form.

    • Allow drill: Drill is enabled for the transaction.

    To modify field properties, the field must first be added to the selected list. Then you can select the field and click Edit to modify properties.