Hi,
We have provided a read-only grid for users. The users are applying some random filters and viewing summary view of one request. When they come back the filters which they have applied are gone and they have to apply filters again.
I know you guys will suggest that we can save filters and access them. But it doesn't work because they have lot of combinations and saving those many combinations is not a good idea.
To avoid losing of applied filters, we opened the summary view in new tab. But some users are getting confused to go back to grid.
Is there a way in Appian to provide a link/button in the summary page to close the tab? or Is there a way to keep the filters applied when user going back to the grid from summary view?
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For closing the tab nothing can't be done except putting a note in summary so that users can be trained to close the tab once they are done. An easy a great solution if users agree!
For retaining the filters, No, record filters can't be pre-loaded unless user has saved it and marked as default.
On another note, we had a similar issue/requirement once and a workaround we had to implement was to use dynamic link to show the summary page instead of record link. It has its pros and cons but our users were comfortable with the cons as they had some specifics this design was managing.
In details, the design is simply replacing recordlink with dynamic link using a toggle variable showSummary having true or false. Ofcourse to make the user come back to grid we had to provide them a link within the summary page clicking on which we diverted the control back to grid from the summary.
Pros :
The grid filters can stay as is. summary opens in same tab.
Cons:
Not a great design as per Appian standards.
If any related action is triggered or data is manipulated within summary page or in background, grid data refresh needs to be handled so that its seamless.
Are the filters implemented as custom components inside an interface? If so, instead of updating the filter variables immediately and having the grid react on every change, would it make sense to include a "Search" button that explicitly applies the filters?
That way, you could store the selected filters in the database when the user clicks "Search" and also apply them to the grid variables. This would allow the interface to always initialize with the last used filters for each user, making the experience more consistent when navigating back and forth between views.
Would that approach work in your case?
I agree with the two suggestions made Harsha .Closing the browser and saving the filter are more like an user training (for business user) activity (Strongly suggest to have a word with them and explain them how these all works) & using dynamic link is not a suggested approach but you can consider that if you don't have any other choice
Did you consider using Site URL parameters? You would have to build the filters separately, not using record user filters, but then you can store the filter values to the url, and when the user returns, the UI state is restored.