Forms with 3 columns sometimes tack on 2 extra columns

JonP

I wish I could give you a clear set of steps to replicate this issue, but it just sometimes happens out of the blue (like the problem with the form name slipping that I reported on earlier). The only consistency I've noticed is that so far it has only affected my 3-column forms. But most of my more complex forms have 3 columns, so the issue may relate to some aspect of the complexity and not columns.

I'll go into a 3-column form to make a change and discover that now there are 5 columns. The extra columns are not being used. When I delete them, I have to do a lot of reformatting of the controls on the form to get it back to the way I had it.

One consistency is that I always have at least one control in the first column that spans the other two. Maybe there is a bug related to the spanning that is creating columns?

I will circle back to this post as I learn more information.

JonP

Can't sleep (should have known not to drink green tea for dinner), so I thought I'd take the opportunity to circle back to this. I haven't seen this issue in a while, so I'm going to assume that it got resolved in one of the last two builds.

But I've started seeing another possibly related issue. This time controls that span or merge columns are losing the merge along with their formatting. When I revisit a form, it looks fine in the browser view of the form, but when I double click to edit a form section, the controls have slipped. If I save the slipped form section, it shows as slipped in the form brower view. I'm still collecting incidents to be able to replicate it. See screenshots showing the form browser and the section browser:

Column slippage before.png

Column slippage after.png

johntalbott

I've had this happen in the past and I just had it happen. I have a two column form I've been working with for a long time, I just added a HTML attribute to it to test something out. Two extra columns were added to the form. The worst part is that I can't delete them.

Either the delete button is not enabled after selecting them. Or after some "clicking around", the delete button becomes enabled, I can delete the 1st extra column, but deleting the 2nd extra I get a null exception error.

aware_support

How can we reproduce this?

JonP

Yes, that's it! When I was experiencing this, I was working heavily with HTML attributes, particularly adding code like this:

<<AssertionReason.PrimaryReason.Name>> <span style="float: right;"><<IF AssertionReason.PrimaryReason.ID IS DEFINED AND 
(AssertionReason.Initiative.Sponsor=LoggedInPerson OR LoggedInPerson.Role.Strategy='Responsible (Full)') THEN SHOW SECTION_START>>
<button class="k-primary aw_custom_form_button" data-ref="<operation name="View Primary Reason" type="start_process" operand="ViewPrimaryReason" parameters="AssertionReason" image_cls="fa fa-edit" display_text="false"> </operation>"> </button> <button class="k-primary aw_custom_form_button" data-ref="<operation name="Clear Primary Reason" type="start_process" operand="ClearReason" parameters="AssertionReason" image_cls="fa fa-unlink" display_text="false">   <description>This will clear the primary reason.</description> </operation>"> </button><<SECTION_END>>  <<IF AssertionReason.PrimaryReason.ID IS UNDEFINED AND 
(AssertionReason.Initiative.Sponsor=LoggedInPerson OR LoggedInPerson.Role.Strategy='Responsible (Full)') THEN SHOW SECTION_START>>
<button class="k-primary aw_custom_form_button" data-ref="<operation name="Add New Primary Reason" type="start_process" operand="AddReason" parameters="AssertionReason" image_cls="fa fa-plus" display_text="false">   <description>Add New Reason as Primary Reason</description> </operation>"> </button>  <button class="k-primary aw_custom_form_button" data-ref="<operation name="Link Existing Reason" type="start_process" operand="ViewRootCauseAnalysis" image_cls="fa fa-link" display_text="false">   <description>Link to Existing Reason as Primary</description> </operation>"> </button>
<<SECTION_END>></span>

I haven't added buttons/sections in a couple weeks. John, did your HTML attribute have buttons and/or SECTION START/END?

Also, when retrieving this code, I encountered that same merge slippage issue (see screenshot).

Column slippage after.png

Column slippage before.png

johntalbott

Yes .. the existing merged columns were split. I believe that what mean by slipping.

My HTML attribute was super simple. I started with basically a copy of the Appointment edit form from the CRM application that has a couple other reference attributes displayed as dropdownlists. I added a HTML cell and with the word "TEST" in it. The columns went haywire.

Support - you might start there for trying to reproducing.

aware_support

Added an HTML cell to the form of the Appointment object in CRM - everything is fine. Where exactly did you add the HTML cell and what was in it?