I'll do my best to put my question into words... just not sure how to.



Consider I have a table with these fields



TableName: Employees

EmployeeID

FirstName

LastName

LocationID



Here is an excerpt from the Locations table



LocationID LocationName

1 United States

2 Canada

3 Mexico



Lets say I created a BO based on this Employees table. Now I create a maintenance form based on this Employees BO.



Now I want to create a BrowseDialog. The question I have is when I create the browse dialog how can I display the locationnames and have them be searchable instead of the ID.



I had thought about creating another BO based on a view I would create with the columns i need but I'm not sure how the browsedialog returns results to the BO its filling if the BO its browsing is different than the Primary BO attached to the form.



I hope thats not too confusing.

As of right now, you can only search within a single BO.  Now you can display anything you want and use as many BO's as necessary for displaying a record...this is where the BrowseInformationPanel would be helpful.  But I have run into this several times myself and have just had to work around it.  Really what you need is to be able to specify a combo box for the item and have it already populated with the Locations.  This way the end-user could select the location via a combo but the search would be performed by respecting the integer value in the table.  So for now this really isn't possible.  Sorry

Thanks for the info.  Are you planning those types of improvements to the BrowseDialog in the future?

Also, Am I correct in assuming that the BrowseDialog cannot be used to return a value either?

It would be a pretty safe bet...I need that functionality as we speak

It is not designed to return a single value.  However, if you have this need, just create a "temp" BO and attach it as the BusinessObjectToPopulate.  When returned, you can code your logic to emulate the return of a single value.

Its been a couple months and i was just wondering if the BrowseDialog has this functionality yet.



Thanks

Yes, the BrowseDialog now has the ability to specify a business object that can be used to populate a "lookup" combo box as a search field.  These enhancements will be included with the next release.

Did you also include the ability to indicate "hidden" search fields, i.e. fields that are set by developer/at runtime, but that the user can't access or change? (for row level security) If so, I will actually be able to use the BrowseDialog!

Yes, you add a search field, set it's initial value, and uncheck the "Visible" box to prevent the search field from being user viewable.

And this is used in the search? It didn't used to be.

No, this feature has not yet been implemented.  If you the field is not visible it will not be used.  You can hide the entire search panel to get this effect, but the end-user will not be able to input any search values at all.  Only what you specify will be used.