Feature Request: a!submitUploadedFiles() for non portal applications

Certified Lead Developer

Any plans to expand a!submitUploadedFiles() beyond portals? I have use cases where this could be useful in a standard application.

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  • 0
    Certified Lead Developer
    in reply to Peter Lewis

    Hi Peter,

    • The main use case would be to allow users to upload files directly from an interface (Site page or Record View). I often develop master detail interfaces where users can update information without having to click a Record Action.
    • My main workaround now for file uploads is basically having a Record Action tied to a Process with a Start form.
    • Impact is that users have an extra click to be able to add or update documents.

    Thanks!

    Mat

Children
  • Thanks for the additional context Mat! I have captured this information in a product use case internally to help us prioritize this. I will say this is an area that we are actively looking into, since as you mentioned Portals now offers a similar functionality for this Slight smile

  • 0
    Certified Lead Developer
    in reply to Peter Lewis

    Additionally I'd suggest there are several other potential uses for allowing this functionality to be used in an arbitrary saveInto in an interface - for one, it would allow much easier handling of all the various use cases that presently require, "oh - just have a button that says 'verify document' and have it submit off the form and loop back, making sure to save all local variable values into process data and passing them back into the form!", etc.

    One of the bigger VERY COMMON use cases it would ease for me is the "deleting a row from an editable grid which contains a newly uploaded file" - which due to the current functionality limitations, creates a feature-incompleteness gap where we are required to use super troublesome workarounds to handle it without dumping orphaned copies of the uploaded file into the target folder upon form submit - since there's currently no ability to remove or clear the value of a newly-uploaded file outside of the file upload field.  At least with the above feature enabled, we could have our "remove row" icon submit uploaded files and then delete the document for that row.  That said, there are cleaner potential implementations of this, but none that have actually been provided Disappointed

  • 0
    Certified Lead Developer
    in reply to Mike Schmitt

    While I agree to Mike, allowing an in-form file upload would then require us to somehow be able to handle the user clicking the "x" top-right on a start form, after uploading a file. This does not start a process in which we could delete the orphaned file.

  • 0
    Certified Lead Developer
    in reply to Stefan Helzle

    The problem is we're not really talking about start forms.  The corner case you mention would be created, but an equal but opposite corner case already exists in the case of "user uploads a file in an editable grid row then removes the row without removing the file, then submits the form", which is more common than you might initially think.

  • I agree that there is a separate but related use case for improving the deletion flow when removing data and their corresponding documents. We do have a separate use case that we are tracking internally for that improvement, but we'll definitely take that into account when looking at the file upload lifecycle!