Actions

Actions can happen to elements in the platform. We are interested in actions that can happen to forms or to parts of a form.

You can specify a specific response or set of responses to form actions. Actions may be triggered by clicking something or by changing the value of a field. Actions can be associated with most parts of a form.

Actions can be associated with the form itself. Hyperlinks and buttons to trigger such actions appear on the form. Actions associated with the form are managed through the state transition family of the form and underlying record. State transition families are discussed in Life cycles. The way that they control the actions of a form is discussed in State-based actions.

Actions can be associated with sections. There are some actions that the platform automatically creates and associates with some kinds of sections. Section actions are discussed in Section actions.

Actions can be associated with fields. Field actions are not triggered through a hyperlink or a button, but through changes to the contents of a field. Field actions are discussed in Field and button actions.

Buttons can and usually do have associated actions. Button actions are triggered by a user clicking the button. The process of configuring a button action is the same as the process of configuring a field action. Button actions are also discussed in Field and button actions.

When a user performs an action, the platform detects whether any Modify Metadata workflow tasks were run for that action.

If a Modify Metadata task has been run, the tab is re-rendered. If no Modify Metadata task was run, field values are updated and graphics sections, calendar sections, query sections, and availability sections are refreshed by updating any information shown to the user.

When an action happens, the things you can specify to happen in a sequence of responses depends on what the action is associated with. Here are some of the possibilities:

• Some types of actions may allow you to specify that a record should be created from a business object that you specify. If you specify that the action should create a record, then the next thing that will happen is that a window will pop up for the user to edit the record's fields.
• If the type of action does not allow creating a record, it will allow specifying that a window should pop up that displays the content from a URL that you specify.
• You may specify that a synchronous workflow should be run. If you specify that the action should run a synchronous workflow, there may be the option of specifying an association that should be created to allow the workflow to navigate to other records.