Load default value in drop-down field and save to record list.

Question

Hello Friends, 
 I have a user form with 9 fields. One of those fields is a drop-down with two values - Open, Closed. When the user opens the form, I want to drop-down value to default to Open. Then the user can fill out the remaining fields and submit the form. 
 In screenshot # 1, I made changes to the expression to default to Open as required. But when the user submits the form, the value is not being saved to the record list (Screenshot #2). It's just a blank field in the record list. 
 Been banging my head on the keyboard and can't figure out this issue. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Peter Lewis · Answer

There's a few ways to do this, but I always prefer to use local variables to default the value and save into the rule input on submission of the form. You know that they must click the submit button to complete the form, so it's a convenient place to transfer any data from one variable to another. Here's some sample SAIL: 
 a!localVariables(
 local!status: "Open",
 a!formLayout(
 contents: {
 a!dropdownField(
 label: "Status",
 choiceLabels: {"Open", "Closed"},
 choiceValues: {"Open", "Closed"},
 value: local!status,
 saveInto: local!status
 )
 },
 buttons: a!buttonLayout(
 primaryButtons: a!buttonWidget(
 label: "Submit",
 style: "PRIMARY",
 submit: true,
 value: local!status,
 saveInto: ri!status
 )
 )
 )
)

Mike Schmitt · Answer

In your second code box, you aren't setting local!status to any default value (i.e. " Open ") as Peter's original code suggestion entailed. Therefore when the user clicks "Submit Anomaly Record" without having made any changes, I would expect it to still save the empty value into ri!record.status . 
 Just to take a guess here, you probably want your variable defintion for local!status to check if ri!record.status is null, and if so, set the variable to "Open", and if not, retain its current non-null value. 
 Also: how are the two above interfaces being called? I don't see how the interface with the dropdown is actually expecting to change the value of local!status in the parent interface. This might change the overall answer as well. The section with the dropdown seems to be defining its own local!status variable which then of course isn't used for anything else. My guess is that you'll need to add a ri!status input to the lower rule and pass in local!status from the parent rule.